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The Resurrection and 
Paul's Argument 



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COWRIGHT DEPOSiT. 



The Resurrection and 
Paul's Argument 



A Study of First Corinthians 
Fifteenth Chapter 



By 
PHILIP L. FRICK, Ph. D. 

Pastor of the First Methodist Episcopal Church, 
Westfield, Massachusetts 



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Cincinnati: Jennings and Graham 
New York: Eaton and Mains 



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Copyright, 1912, 
By Jennings and Graham 



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WHOSE EXALTED CREED WAS, 

To live is Christ; to die is gain" 



PREFACE 

Of perennial concern is the question of a 
life after death. Christianity gives the 
final answer. The revelation through 
Christ is supreme. This conviction pos- 
sessed the great soul of St. Paul. The 
Church can never sufficiently thank God 
that this spiritual genius set himself the 
task of interpreting for humanity the resur- 
rection of Christ. His majestic argument 
must not be overlooked. No voice through- 
out the ages equals that of Paul. The 
present-day world, seeking for light through 
philosophy and science and psychology, 
will do well to ponder the message of the 
great apostle. 

In the preparation of this volume many 
authors have been consulted. No bibli- 
ography is offered. The writer wishes to 
acknowledge his obligation particularly to 
Dr. W. Milligan, Frederick Robertson, and 
Dr. G. A. Gordon, for certain rich sugges- 
tions. 

Philip L. Frick. 

Westfield, Mass. 

5 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

I. The Gospel of the Risen Christ.. . 11 

II. The Fact of the Resurrection and 

the Proof from Eye-witnesses . . 31 

III. The Corinthian Doubters and the 

Denial of a Resurrection 59 

IV. The Denial as Invalidating the 

Resurrection of Christ 77 

V. The Denial as Repudiating the 

Christian Faith 99 

VI. The Denial as Impeaching the 

Witnesses 121 

VII. The Denial and the Departed 

Christians 135 

VIII. The Denial and the Living Be- 
lievers 157 

IX. The Resurrection and Christ, the 

First-fruits 175 

X. The Invincible Christ 199 

XI. The Denial as a Detriment to 

Christian Activities 219 

7 



CONTENTS 

XII. The Method of the Resurrec- 
tion 243 

XIII. The Resurrection Body 263 

XIV. The Earthly and the Heavenly. . . 283 

XV. The Victory over Death 305 

XVI. The Motive-power of the Resur- 
rection 325 



8 



CHAPTER I 
THE GOSPEL OF THE RISEN CHRIST 



In Paul's epistles the resurrection is set forth 
as a specifically Christian doctrine. The thought 
of a resurrection had existed elsewhere only im- 
perfectly and in certain forms. So far as it had 
a place at all in ethnic religions it was a vague, 
inconsistent conception, associated with crude and 
puerile ideas or with beliefs that gave terror to 
existence. — Salmond. 

Every other human biography ends with death. 

Christ's real, living presence, and not the mere 
remembrance of Him, takes hold of men's souls. 

— Lotze. 

Belief in a future life, in immortality, is closely 
connected with belief in God. The soul that com- 
munes with Him finds in this very relation — in 
the sense of its own worth implied in this relation — 
the assurance that it is not to perish with its ma- 
terial organs. It is conscious of belonging to a 
different order of things. — Fisher. 

The empire of the world belongs to God. This 
is the first step in the sublime idealism of the 
Hebrew prophets. — Ewald. 

I believe in the immortality of the soul, not 
in the sense in which I believe in the demonstrable 
truths of science, but as a supreme act of faith in 
the reasonableness of God's work. — Fishe. 

Human life is a colossal enigma without im- 
mortality. — Hillis. 



CHAPTER I 
The Gospel of the Risen Christ 

Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the 
gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye 
received, and wherein ye stand; by which also ye 
are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached 
unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. For 
I delivered unto you first of all that which I also 
received, how that Christ died for our sins ac- 
cording to the Scriptures; and that He was buried, 
and that He rose again the third day according to 
the Scriptures: — 1 Corinthians 15: verses 1-4. 

When this spiritual giant, Paul, proclaimed 
his profoundest religious conclusions con- 
cerning God's purposes toward man, what 
did he herald? When he interpreted with 
keenest insight the personality of Christ, 
what impressed him as the most exalted 
achievement of the Divine Son? When 
Paul's "Gospel" is unfolded to its sublimest 
truth, what climax revelation is made? 

11 



THE RESURRECTION 

When he grasps most comprehensively the 
majestic possibilities of the human spirit, 
and interprets most sympathetically the 
needs of mankind, what final message of 
cheer and comfort and inspiration does 
he speak? When he victoriously itinerated 
among the dying nations of his day, what 
new dynamic of life did he offer? When he 
wooed men from sin to holiness, to what 
mighty faith did he convincingly appeal? 
When he revolutionized the religious life of 
humanity, upon what cornerstone did he 
build his new, all-conquering Christianity? 
When he would establish Christ's world- 
Church, upon what foundation-fact must 
it be constructed? 

The resurrection of Christ — this was the 
climax teaching in Paul's "good news." 
It was this mighty truth with its significant 
implications that aroused the Jews, and 
startled the Greeks, and stirred the Romans. 
It is this that still thrills the world. It is 
this revelation around which all others 
must cluster, as stars around one central 
sun. It was a unique message. Never 
had the despairing, bewildered world, sur- 

12 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

feited with commonplaces, and trying to 
feed its hunger upon the husks of surmises 
and doubts, heard so bold a doctrine. It 
was a powerful message — turning the world 
upside down, and inaugurating the new age. 
It was a victorious message. Old faiths, 
gloomy and unsatisfactory, disappeared 
with its coming. By it, as under the spell 
of sweetest music, humanity ceased its 
weary weeping, and began to chant a song 
of deliverance. It was a transfiguring mes- 
sage. Sin lost its mask; its real hideous- 
ness appeared, and its power was broken, 
as men listened to the story of their in- 
finite value to God. Beholding itself in the 
white light of eternity, mankind began with 
an unprecedented zeal to turn from evil and 
to seek after holiness. What a majestic 
spectacle is this exalted Paul, preaching to 
a despairing world a new hope through the 
risen Christ! 

And it is this basic faith in the resur- 
rection of Christ that Paul, with all the 
greatness of his unique character, heralds 
and defends as central in the new religion 
established by Christ. To him it has a 

13 



THE RESURRECTION 

strategic significance. All other truths con- 
cerning the Divine Son need this to com- 
plete them. All other conceptions concern- 
ing the meaning of Christ's ministry are 
partial without this. Without Christ's res- 
urrection, all other events in His mighty 
existence are incoherent. The perfect flower 
and fruit of the earthly career of Christ was 
in His deliverance from the grave. Dis- 
prove His power over death, and the con- 
vincing significance of every other fact of 
His ministry and nature is invalidated. 
Remove this strong cornerstone from His 
career, and the stately temple of His vast 
achievements falls into chaotic ruin. Every 
other belief concerning Christ requires this 
to support it and to make it compelling. 
It is not accidental to the Christian system 
of belief. It is essentially fundamental to 
the sacred revelations that the holy Christ 
made by His entrance into human relation- 
ships. 

There is no "good news" to humankind 
without the message of eternal life. There 
is no hope for sin-cursed humanity if the 
sinless Christ does not live now to aid His 

14 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

own. Hollow mockeries are all beliefs in 
God that stop short of revealing Him as the 
Giver of eternal life. The grieving, grovel- 
ing race will listen to no message that does 
not contain this hope of an endless dawn 
after life's stormy night. Deny this and 
men are baffled by inscrutable mysteries. 
Gloomy doubts, shadowy misgivings, take 
the place of cheerful confidences, inspiring 
trusts. The weeping multitudes will not 
hearken long to any word purporting to be 
from God until exultant declaration is 
made of His power over death. Hearing 
this they will gladly come to obey and serve 
and love Him. Useless for Paul to try to 
win the Jewish or Gentile world to a faith 
in Christ, unless he can herald His indis- 
putable supremacy over the forces of de- 
struction. Without the resurrection, Chris- 
tianity would have been still-born, and the 
Church an impossibility. Prove this hope 
as to Christ, and the nations will crown 
Him their spiritual King. 

Paul identifies the new system of Chris- 
tianity with the faith in the risen, exalted 
Christ. This is the Church's foundation, 

15 



THE RESURRECTION 

Consequently in the midst of his on-rushing 
letter to the Corinthians, he must pause 
to write his eloquent, convincing defense 
of the precious belief in a future life with 
Christ. Nowhere else does he devote equal 
space to the elucidation of any one of the 
Christian doctrines. Nor is this by chance. 
He was constrained thus to do by his recog- 
nition of the climax value to humanity of 
this belief in the resurrection of his Lord. 
Always in his preaching does he lay great 
stress upon this, knowing that emphasis 
here strengthens every other Christian 
tenet. 

Paul gloried in the cross of Christ. 
Through it did he understand the heart of 
God, the loyal obedience of the Son, the 
priceless value of man. Paul could never 
forget that the only begotten One of God 
emptied Himself to become man's Savior. 
With what marvelous work did Paul in- 
terpret the incarnation of the Divine Son! 
To declare God's love did He come into the 
ranks of fallen humanity. In love did He 
live the flawless life, that He might become 
man's Exemplar and Savior. In love did 

16 



i 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

He climb Calvary's rough sides. In love 
did He give Himself to die upon the cross. 
He loved His own until the last. His self- 
sacrificing love made Him willing to carry 
any burden, to endure any hardship, to 
suffer any ignominy, to submit to any ex- 
perience, if only at last He could win man 
back in love to God. 

Paul knew that Christ had lived more 
than a loving, sinless, self-sacrificing, obedi- 
ent life. He had lived a conquering life 
over all of mankind's foes. He had mas- 
tered the grave. He had demonstrated 
the new lav/ of life. He revealed what was 
God's eternal purpose for the race. God 
had raised Him from the dead and declared 
Him to be the Son with power. By this 
supreme act did God display what was the 
measure of His loving plans for His own. 
Christ brought life and immortality to 
light. Christ's existence we must endeavor 
to evaluate, not merely from the standpoint 
of the cross, but also of the empty tomb. 
It is not enough to know that Christ was 
incarnated. The world must know also 
that He is the Exalted, Victorious One. 
2 17 



THE RESURRECTION 

The cross needs the empty tomb to make 
it the true spiritual dynamic. The suffering 
Christ must also be the triumphant Christ. 
By some special act of power on God's part, 
His Son must be shown to be victorious 
over everything human and earthly. As 
Professor Bowne writes: "The resurrection 
is just what was needed to make clear what 
the great revealing meant that culminated 
in the life of Christ. It was also what the 
disciples and the Church needed to complete 
their faith in their Lord." This constitutes 
also the highest revelation of God's love. 
As Doctor Gordon states: "If love does 
not die, it is not sovereign. If it is not 
buried, it is not absolute in sympathy. If 
it is not revived, it is not victorious." 

This fundamental faith in Christ's resur- 
rection Paul consequently "declared" with 
joyful reiteration. What a welcome truth 
to Corinth and to the world! Like a 
"motif" in a great symphony, Paul spoke 
it with ever-increasing confidence to the 
rejoicing Gentile world. This message his 
Corinthian converts received, because it 
gripped the reason, and swayed the emotions 

18 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

and inspired the life. Fitting so royally 
into all the needs of their nature, they could 
not but give it gladdest welcome. Paul 
did not force the doctrine upon them. 
They willingly accepted it, because it 
ministered so profoundly to the joy and 
holiness of their lives. Paul could boldly 
declare that it was in this comprehensive 
Gospel that included the glorious truth of 
the resurrection. "Wherein ye stand." Their 
entire religious life was based upon this 
belief. Their spirituality was the out- 
growth of their confidence in the resur- 
rected Christ. Their religious fixedness, 
their mental restfulness, their complacent 
outlook upon the future, their buoyant 
hopefulness, their freedom from corroding 
fears — all rested upon Paul's full-orbed 
Gospel that contained the belief in Christ's 
exaltation through the power of God, His 
Father. 

Vastly more than they realized was their 
religious life in its entirety based upon 
this conception of a glorified Christ. Re- 
move this foundation, and their whole 
spiritual existence shatters like a temple 

19 



THE RESURRECTION 

shaken by the earthquake. By just this 
richest of all messages were they also 
"saved." Conversion and redemption re- 
sulted when the sublime truth was believed. 
It stirred the conscience. It motived the 
will in its struggles against sin and toward 
holiness. It furnished the mightiest pro- 
test against earthliness, by holding out the 
promise of an immortal existence. It em- 
phasized the glorification of personality, by 
declaring the eternal permanence of char- 
acter. To the soul aspiring for the good 
it held out the incentive of God's unfailing 
assistance until finally the exalted spiritual 
goal was attained. It pointed out the 
eternal consequences of good and evil, 
and motived men to strive heroically for all 
that was acceptable to God, knowing that 
upon them would rest His eternal good- 
pleasure. The hope transfigured their lives. 
That "He rose according to the Scrip- 
tures," is Paul's primary contention. His 
resurrection was in perfect accord with all 
former divine revelations concerning the 
value and destiny of man. Everything 
previous prepared for this final revelation. 

20 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

This was no contradictory interpolation, 
running counter to what was already known 
of God's will toward mankind. The Jewish 
nation particularly, should have seen at 
once the complete normalness of this highest 
truth which God knew mankind needed for 
its perfect redemption. What were the 
Holy Writings designed to do for Israel 
and for all the world, if not to give such 
broad conceptions as to God's nature, His 
far-reaching plans, His mysterious power, 
His loving sovereignty over all forces af- 
fecting the life of man, that the race could 
not doubt God's power to raise into life 
again that well-beloved Son whom He was 
to send for humanity's salvation? For this 
majestic purpose did all the law-givers and 
prophets and psalmists of the old dispensa- 
tion write, that they might prepare the 
human heart for the sublime message of the 
immortal life. All Scripture was therefore 
initial to the belief in a Messiah, — not merely 
One who would love and sacrifice and suffer 
and die, but also One who would live and 
reign forever. In the Scriptures were the 
hints, the foregleams, the prophecies of life 

21 



THE RESURRECTION 

triumphant over death. Through all the 
sacred writers the spirit of man had been 
voicing its deepest longings, its holiest 
convictions, its infallible instincts, its soar- 
ing hopes, its clearest reasonings, its purest 
aspirations. And when the highest moods 
were upon man was he surest of his infinite 
worth to God. Consequently the Psalmist 
could sing, "Thou wilt not suffer thine Holy 
One to see corruption." Because of the 
overshadowings of the Almighty would 
eternal security be for the Messiah. Having 
sent Him into the earthly life, God will let 
Him taste the bitterness of death; but He 
will comfort Him with eternal bliss. The 
all-loving Father will let His Son feel the 
chill of death's touch; but He will surely 
call Him into a more glorious after-life. 
The All-wise God will permit Him, for a 
little while, to be stripped of power and to 
endure humiliation, and to become subject 
to every tragic law of human existence; but 
this same God will also highly exalt Him 
into exceeding great glory. He will let 
the savage storms of earthly disaster smite 
Him unto the death; but God will not de- 

22 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

sert Him. For His loved One there will 
be provided the way of escape. He will let 
human sin, grown hideous and awful, nail 
Him in wild rebellion against God's will, to 
a cross; but the compassionate Father will 
rescue Him into ageless exaltation. He will 
not permit death to have tyrant's sover- 
eignty over the sinless One. 

No devout Jew, thoughtfully reading 
the Scriptures, ought ever to have doubted 
Christ's resurrection. No human being 
anywhere, understanding even in slightest 
degree the nature of God and His omnipo- 
tence over man, should have hesitated to 
accept the belief in the after-life as the one 
final supreme gift of God to His own. This 
was Revelation's focus-point. For this faith 
all the Old Testament was a preliminary. 
Paul could not doubt the God in whom he 
believed. The God that hung the stars 
in the heavens, and laid the foundations for 
the snow-shrouded hills, He has power over 
all of earth's forces to compel them to do 
His holy will. He that gives life can also 
give eternal life. The second is not more 
inconceivable than the first. Such a faith 

23 



THE RESURRECTION 

is not a preposterous assumption. "Why- 
should it be thought a thing incredible with 
you that God should raise the dead?" said 
Paul to his Jewish enemies. Paul had a 
great theology because he had a great God. 
And the resurrection of Christ was but the 
demonstration of God's power over the 
force of annihilation. This is God's world. 
All forces are His instruments. Everything 
must be amenable to His will. They must 
be servants of His high plans. To deny is to 
doubt God. The denial of the resurrection 
casts discredit upon Him, as if a part of the 
universe had escaped from His control, 
and He was no longer Ruler, but subject. 
This is the message for our day. The 
sacred word holds true for our time more 
than ever before. God is Master. The 
forces of nature belong to Him. They are 
not beyond His unfailing control. They 
must so interact as to cause everything to 
work for good. This high optimism must 
fill all hearts as they think upon God. He 
is sovereign ! Against Him there can be no 
mutiny in the nature that is the expression 
of His will. Our spiritualized philosophy 

24 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

is but repeating the verdict of the Hebrew 
theology. Indeed, philosophy is but theol- 
ogy under another name. In its loftiest 
moods it meditates upon God. It tries 
to solve the old riddles: "Who is God?" 
"What is man?" "What is the world?" 
"For what purpose is our known universe 
created?" Philosophy and theology are 
hand -maidens, looking into the face of 
God and endeavoring to interpret His 
ways toward men. Both of them minister 
in the courts of God. Both of them speak 
the same truth. Both of them, trusting 
in God, herald the life everlasting. Well 
does Bushnell claim that a belief in God 
settles the philosophic question as to the 
resurrection. If God exists, He must exist 
as the Lord of all physical things, not their 
helpless servant. On the assumption that 
God lives and reigns, a resurrection is pos- 
sible. The denial of an after-life becomes 
increasingly difficult and preposterous, as 
men begin to grasp the unmeasured im- 
mensity of God's cosmos and to understand 
by what amazing ties mankind is related 
to God's orderly world, and by what in- 

25 



THE RESURRECTION 

comprehensible providences God sustains 
the life of His children. To set limits to 
God's dealings with man is wildest intel- 
lectual insanity. Who shall be reckless 
enough to declare what the Omnipotent One 
can do for those whom He loves! 

Because God is supreme must death 
do His holy bidding. It is absolutely 
under His rigid control as is the growth of 
flowers, and the swelling of the tides and 
the wandering of the planets, and the 
cycling pageant of the seasons. He can do 
with death what He purposes. It exists 
because He ordains it to be His obedient 
servant. It is present as a human phe- 
nomenon because somehow the loving 
Father sees it to be necessary in His divine 
economy over His household. If He allows 
it to exist to fulfill His purpose, He can 
banish it when His will has been accom- 
plished. He can "abolish death" when He 
desires. The God that bids sunrise to fol- 
low sunset, He can make life the holy 
sequel to death. 

Our high faith in the future life of man 
26 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

through Christ is in sublimest accord with 
all that we know about God. Our knowl- 
edge of His perfect mastery over creation 
leads us to the calm trust that death can 
have no permanent supremacy over Christ, 
nor over God's faithful children. Human- 
ity's burning hopes, its lofty aspirations, its 
mystic longings, its unfathomable instincts 
are not meaningless. All these are holy, 
unmistakable prophecies. The historian 
has argued correctly that by the very uni- 
versality of this mysterious language of the 
Spirit has humanity justly accredited the 
belief in a life to come. "He has written 
immortality in our souls." It is a very part 
of our nature. This is our sixth sense. 
To believe in this is one of our basic needs. 
Therefore did the holy men of old walking 
with God, and the saints of all times enjoy- 
ing blessed communion with Him, reason 
that God would withhold no good gift from 
them that love Him. Was this life good? 
Then He will give the other life also which 
vastly transcends this earthly existence. 
He that "only hath immortality," He will 

n 



THE RESURRECTION 

exalt His faithful children into eternal, 
sublime existence with Himself. By the 
resurrection of Christ, for which all Scrip- 
ture had been preparing, God gives us a 
vision into His purpose toward mankind. 



28 



CHAPTER II 

THE FACT OF THE RESURRECTION 
AND THE PROOF FROM EYE- 
WITNESSES 



One fact verified, indisputable, and under- 
stood, to the Anglo-Saxon mind at least, is worth 
a whole world of ingenious speculation. — Gordon. 

In order to the perpetuation of the religion of 
Christ, the resurrection must be a fact. For were 
it not capable of establishment beyond all reason- 
able doubt as a fact, men would cease to believe 
in the divine origin of our religion. The only 
way by which we can retain our faith is to include 
the supernatural in the facts pertaining to the 
resurrection. — Rishell . 

That which is the foundation of all our hopes 
and all our fears — all our hopes and fears which 
are of any consideration — I mean a Future Life. 
— Butler. 

It is wasted effort trying to explain the resur- 
rection on purely subjective or psychological or 
pathological grounds. Only as a truly objective 
supernatural event does it take its place in the 
historical and psychological conditions of the time. 
— Beyschlag. 



CHAPTER II 

The Fact of the Resurrection and the 
Proof from Eye- Witnesses 

And that He was seen of Cephas, then of the 
twelve: after that, He was seen of above five hun- 
dred brethren at once; of whom the greater part 
remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep. 
After that, He was seen of James; then of all the 
apostles. And last of all He was seen of me also, 
as of one born out of due time. For I am the 
least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called 
an apostle, because I persecuted the Church of 
God. But by the grace of God I am what I am: 
and His grace which was bestowed upon me was 
not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than 
they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was 
with me. Therefore whether it were I or they, so 
we preach, and so ye believe. — Verses 5-11. 

To some persons no evidence is conclusive 
that does not base itself upon the testimony 
of the senses. Not soul but matter speaks 
the final word. The mighty conclusion of 

31 



THE RESURRECTION 

reason and heart are worthless in the pres- 
ence of some trivial physical mystery. The 
argument "according to the Scriptures," 
seems utterly irrelevant. The significant 
demands of the intellect, the irrefutable 
logic of the soul's hungers, the sublime de- 
ductions from the nature of God, the mystic 
intuitions as to the value of man — these are 
entirely meaningless and may be completely 
discarded. Such persons clamor for science 
and disparage theology. They reject phi- 
losophy and demand demonstration. The 
laboratory only can furnish a positive an- 
swer for them to all problems in the human 
realm. One clear look of the eye is worth a 
thousand conclusions of the mind. Mental 
deductions may be but fine-spun hallucina- 
tions and clever self-deceptions. Philosophy, 
these assert, frequently grasps at shadows, 
and theology mistakes ghosts for realities. 
Accurate knowledge must establish its claims 
in the highest court of the senses. Facts 
are to be proven otherwise than through 
theorizings. The truthful must verify itself 
in actual experience open to all under any 
circumstances. The factual will always 

32 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

demonstrate its real existence by unmis- 
takable signs. Only that will be accepted 
as a "fact" which can demonstrate its 
reality even to the most skeptical, by sen- 
suous evidence that is consistent with 
irrefutable natural laws. It will need 
no further defense by reason. Nor can 
anything consistently be admitted as "real" 
that does not satisfactorily meet this 
test. 

Among the Christians at Corinth this 
class of persons demanding outward proof 
for all the creed declared by Paul, must 
have had large representation. He makes 
it his task to answer their objections. He 
will meet their denial by appeal to expe- 
rience. He will furnish satisfactory proof 
for the doctrine he declares. The resur- 
rection of Christ was to Paul an incon- 
trovertible fact. Nothing could be more 
clearly demonstrated. Nothing was more 
firmly established by proof. There was 
so much of absolute actuality about it, that 
every question was forever settled, every 
doubt completely silenced, every skepticism 
hushed. Its reality was so irrefutably dem- 
3 33 



THE RESURRECTION 

onstrated that the whole Christian system 
could be made to rest upon it. 

Nor did Paul's assurance concerning 
Christ's resurrection rest merely upon his 
conclusions from "Scriptures." He has 
other supports for the Church's faith. He 
will meet the skeptics on their own ground 
and produce evidence which can not be 
denied. He is too careful a master-builder 
of the faith of Christianity to put a de- 
fective cornerstone into the structure. He 
will leave no possible room for unfriendly 
criticism. He must forever silence the un- 
believer, and demonstrate to all the world 
the sure foundation of the Christian faith. 
In order to convince every one of the reality 
of Christ's resurrection, Paul makes his 
appeal to the senses also. He turns scien- 
tist. As much as Hume or Bacon or Spen- 
cer or Huxley, does Paul believe in the 
"laboratory method." His creed has no 
room for guesses. His tenets are not 
synonymous with theories. He does not 
care to preach "old wives' fables." Is 
Christ's resurrection a fact? Then it must 
be able to furnish evidences of its reality. 

34 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

Did Christ arise from the dead? Then 
there must be those who saw Him. Pro- 
duce the witnesses, and the case is closed. 
Furnish the evidence, and the question 
of His survival after death is forever settled. 
This Paul proceeds to do. He summons 
the eye-witnesses. To substantiate the be- 
lief in the resurrection of the crucified Lord, 
he submits the testimony of the many eye- 
witnesses that have beheld Him alive who 
once was dead. These saw Him led away 
to Calvary. Standing near the cross, they 
watched through the long hours of His 
crucifixion His awful death-struggles until 
they saw the thrust of the Roman sword, 
and knew that the end had come for their 
loved Lord. They saw Him taken from the 
cross of shame and laid in Joseph's tomb, 
while the soldiers kept guard by order of 
the revengeful Scribes and Pharisees. But 
they beheld Him again after the brief en- 
tombment. He walked in their midst. They 
consorted with Him in beloved Galilee. 
Their wonder-struck ears listened again to 
the soft cadences of His loving voice. Their 
trembling fingers touched His hands again. 

35 



THE RESURRECTION 

He shared with some of them the frugal 
meal, at early dawn by the lake side, after 
the night of toil. They knew this was their 
Lord. He that was dead was alive again! 
Every physical, bodily sense proved that 
their crucified, dead Master had risen into 
a new existence by some power beyond their 
comprehension. His life was a fact — real, 
indisputable. He had arisen. The grave 
could not hold Him. He had transcended 
the usual methods of nature. Death could 
not lay in permanent victory its heavy 
hands upon their Messiah. He appeared 
to them in such a physical form that their 
physical senses could grasp His identity. 
By the same evidence through which they 
knew that He lived before His death did 
they know that He lived now. They had 
seen Him and handled Him and spent 
the glad seasons of communion with Him. 
To the individual and the little group at the 
tomb did He appear. By the seaside to 
the frightened disciples; to the two de- 
spondent followers journeying to Emmaus; 
to the bewildered yet rejoicing companies 
worshiping behind closed doors; to the 
36 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

larger congregations bound together by 
love for Him; to the many that honored 
and worshiped Him, — did the Risen Lord 
appear. 

Upon their united evidence does Paul 
base his faith. And such testimony is 
conclusive. If such evidence does not con- 
vince, then nothing can. It stands out, 
real as mountain peaks. The senses have 
testified to His survival, as well as the rea- 
son. The resurrection is a demonstrated, 
historical fact. It is proven as is any other 
human event, by appeal to human wit- 
nesses. Hear the evidence from trust- 
worthy human lips, and the reality of any 
phenomenon, however wonderful and in- 
explicable, is authenticated. This proves 
the case. This demonstrates its validity. 
No appeal from this verdict! Skepticism 
now means unreason. Doubt now is akin 
to sin. 

There is nothing more final than human 
evidence that corroborates itself. Having 
ascertained the trustworthiness of the wit- 
nesses upon sufficient testimony, history 
will record their statement as impregnable 

37 



THE RESURRECTION 

fact, however unusual or remarkable or 
miraculous the phenomenon to which they 
bear testimony. To doubt, then, is sheerest 
intellectual blindness. It is skepticism gone 
mad. Were such testimony discredited, 
then advance in knowledge of any kind 
would be impossible. The past would 
shackle the future. The trust in science 
would be a hollow mockery. Consequently 
Hume brands himself as an intellectual 
bigot when endeavoring, according to his 
petty ideas, to define miracles, he speaks 
of them as "violations of the laws of 
nature and, as a firm and unalterable 
experience, has established these laws, the 
proof against a miracle is as entire as any 
argument from experience can possibly be 
imagined, no testimony is sufficient to es- 
tablish a miracle unless the testimony be 
of such a kind that its falsehood w T ould be 
more miraculous than the fact which it 
endeavors to establish." But Hume's wild 
dogmatism disgusts equally the astute phi- 
losopher and the open-minded scientist. 
Nature's uniformity does not preclude the 
possibility of later higher manifestations of 

38 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

power by Him who is the Master of nature's 
laws. To dispute this is to put the laws 
above the Law-giver. No scientist dare 
say what is possible or impossible. Humil- 
ity befits the scientist and the philosopher, 
as does mercy a monarch. A miracle is 
not a violation of Nature's laws. It may 
be but a new method according to which 
God operates in order to bring to expres- 
sion some loftier purposes of His own. 
The hypothesis of "uniformity" is merely 
a generalization from past experiences. 
In no sense can it determine what future 
experiences will be. These are in the keep- 
ing of God. He can at any time alter the 
natural, in order to reveal some necessary 
spiritual truth. What these departures 
from the usual method are, remains to be 
proven by sufficient testimony. Whether 
such things as transcend our usual knowl- 
edge have actually happened, can be learned 
only by authoritative evidence. 

The significant question then, in refer- 
ence to the problem of the resurrection is, 
as to whether it can be shown by sufficient 
evidence that God ever did restore a person 

39 



THE RESURRECTION 

to life. If adequate testimony is forth- 
coming, then the reality of the occurrence 
is beyond reasonable dispute. We are 
then compelled to acknowledge that in this 
case, for some reason, the general law has 
not been operative. Some higher law now 
shows its force. If a worthy reason for this 
departure is discoverable, then there can 
absolutely be no legitimate ground for re- 
fusing to accept the new statement of fact. 
The witnesses prove it. The case is closed 
as regards any further controversy about it. 
And who would hesitate to believe that 
in the sublime revelation which Christ's 
resurrection brought there is adequate 
reason why the usual methods of nature 
should be laid aside, in order that a fact 
in a superior realm of knowledge could be 
disclosed? As some one has said, "Jesus 
Christ is the standing proof that God has 
interfered in the affairs of this world." 
His resurrection is the supreme illustration. 
Testimony to this irrefutably establishes 
its historical validity. All depends upon 
the significance of the miracle and the 
quality of the evidence produced. 

40 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

Such testimony Paul offered in the eye- 
witnesses to whom he appeals. They fur- 
nish the "infallible proofs." He asks no- 
body to accept the strange doctrine upon 
the value of Paul's own conversion experi- 
ences on the road to Damascus. He refers 
to the more than six hundred persons, many 
of them still alive at the time of the writing 
of his epistle, all bearing joyful testimony to 
the living Christ. On six occasions, totally 
varied in nature, is He mentioned as having 
appeared. Paul instances each case. He 
is not trying to manufacture a tenet. The 
testimony of these persons he can not doubt 
and keep faith with his own intelligence. 
He is forced to accept the evidence that 
Christ arose. It was an actual occurrence. 
It was an historic fact. 

Nor can the reliability of the evidence 
be questioned. All the requirements of 
trustworthiness are satisfactorily met. 
There was sufficient corroborative testi- 
mony. No parsimony here! This funda- 
mental belief of Christianity does not rest 
upon the statement of a few scattered in- 
dividuals. The appeal is to the hundreds. 
41 



THE RESURRECTION 

The few might have been easily misled: 
not so the larger companies. The circum- 
stances of His appearances differ. No op- 
portunity for skillful deception! If tradi- 
tion had recorded only one appearance of 
Christ, even to the many, there might have 
been the suspicion of fraud or error. But 
in no two appearances is the setting the 
same. Consequently, the opportunity for 
error or deception is greatly decreased. 
The risen Christ is at home with His own 
under earthly roofs or under the open skies. 
The types of persons to whom He appears 
differed. In the larger congregations there 
might have been the impulsive, the thought- 
less, the emotional, the mystical. This class 
might possibly have misrepresented certain 
experiences, or misinterpreted certain phe- 
nomena. But in such a company there 
must have been also the calm, the de- 
liberate, the conservative, the skeptical. 
They will carefully diagnose all events pur- 
porting to relate to their Lord. Thomas 
and James and Peter are among the eye- 
witnesses, as well as John or Mary and a 
few other women. These will not hastily 

42 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

accept a conclusion. These must be con- 
vinced before they accept so incredible a be- 
lief as that the Lord had arisen. Thomas, 
the "Christian doubter," must lay his 
finger-tips in the wounds of His hands and 
side ere he believe. He will not trust 
until he has made proof by his senses. 

Nor were they biased witnesses. Their 
fond hopes did not give birth to a mistaken 
belief. Prejudiced by wild expectations, 
they were not easily misled as to what was 
reality. They did not mistake their sub- 
jective states for objective appearances of 
Christ. Having been unbalanced by Christ's 
suggestions, they were not unfit to dis- 
tinguish between the empty phantoms of 
their own minds and the tangible realities 
of a physical world. Bewildered by the 
passion of their love, they were not beguiled 
into creating any wild report about Him. 
Incited by a few fanatics, they were not 
stampeded into absurd conclusions con- 
cerning His reappearance. 

They did not expect Christ's return. 
They had pitifully misunderstood His mes- 
sages. They did not anticipate His coming 

43 



THE RESURRECTION 

again, even though He had foretold it. 
What a pitiful picture is that group of 
followers of the Christ! History presents 
no sadder scene. They were like a flock 
when the loving shepherd has been smitten. 
Christ was their sun. They loved Him. 
For the three years they had heard His 
matchless words, and seen His abounding 
wonders. Always were they face to face 
with this man of marvelous, incomprehen- 
sible power. They had listened to His 
stupendous claims. They had come under 
the spell of His holy life. They had ex- 
perienced the glorious sweep of His ministry 
of love. They had witnessed His undis- 
puted sovereignty over nature that made 
men liken Him to an Elias or one of the 
great dead. One day the fullness of the 
majesty of His personality dawns upon 
them, and they gladly acknowledge Him 
the long-awaited Messiah. He is a greater 
than Elias and Jeremias. He is the Son of 
God. He will usher in the promised King- 
dom. Under His powerful regimen Israel's 
restoration will come. All glory shall be His ! 
But what an awful shock awaits them! 
44 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

He in whom they believed and under whom 
they hoped for the restoration of all things, 
falls a helpless prey to His bloodthirsty 
enemies. At last the Pharisees, like baying 
bloodhounds, bring down their quarry. 
The brutal soldiery and the fickle mob 
lead Him off to Calvary. The cross gets 
its victim. Their loved Christ is dead. 
He is borne to the tomb and buried in 
hopeless sorrow. 

With His burial their hopes die. The 
one in whom they trusted was but a de- 
feated human being. They are crushed, 
bewildered, despondent. They begin to 
scatter in confusion. The future is for- 
gotten, being shrouded in utter gloom. 
They have been ignorantly misled. Blasted 
their hopes in Him! For them now only 
the gloom of despondency, the dreary 
wastes of lonesomeness, the taunting mem- 
ories of a bright dream turned to blackness. 
Now the inglorious, humdrum, spiritless 
life again, and Peter will go back to his nets, 
and Matthew to his tax-booth. The tomb 
holds their Christ. The slow-pacing senti- 
nels keep guard against theft. The ven- 

45 



THE RESURRECTION 

omous Pharisees lurk near, determined 
to prevent any fraud. The hopeless, chil- 
ling silence of that rock-hewn grave has 
entered the disciples' hearts. 

Then something happens! This de- 
spairing band becomes radiant again. This 
demoralized group becomes vitalized again. 
A mystic emotion, resistless as on-sweeping 
springtime, captures their chilled spirits. 
A new conviction masters them. They are 
different even now. A new passion fires 
them. A fresh enthusiasm thrills them. 
They act like men facing a calm dawn after 
a tempestuous night. They are trans- 
formed from a dispersing band of cowards 
into a phalanx of invincibles. They begin 
with unconquerable zeal their spiritual 
tasks that are to inaugurate indeed the 
Kingdom of God. 

What is the explanation of this strange 
procedure? Such a marvelous transforma- 
tion needs an adequate cause. What new 
dynamic is at work upon them? There 
must have been some tremendous fact 
to influence them and to produce this 
miracle of their changed lives. 

46 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

There was a fact. Fair-mindedness, 
sanity, unprejudice, have but one answer. 
Christ had arisen! He had appeared to 
them. He who was dead had come to life 
again. He, persecuted by Pilate, crucified 
by the Jews, laid away in Joseph's tomb, 
had returned, by some power beyond com- 
prehension, to their midst again, and the 
many had seen Him. Not a phantom 
vision, not a subjective hallucination was 
this, but their beloved Christ Himself. 
Now He walked among them in quiet 
grandeur as in the happy days of old. For 
such a wonder they were not prepared. 
Such a thing they had not expected. And 
now, in epochal hours, they commune with 
Him. Their eyes, once heavy with weep- 
ing, feast themselves upon His glorified 
face. To listen to His familiar voice again, 
that was sweetest music. Their mourning 
turns into gladness unspeakable, for they 
have Him once more and they are satisfied. 
They exult as a flock to whom the departed 
shepherd has returned. 

He is the same Lord, but with mysterious 
differences which they do not understand 

47 



THE RESURRECTION 

nor endeavor to explain. Unchanged by 
the dread experience of death, He has still 
the same interests as of yore. His person- 
ality is unaltered. They can identify Him 
not merely by the physical characteristics, 
but by His spiritual and mental similarities. 
The grave had not altered His soul atmos- 
phere; and breathing this, the disciples 
knew their Lord. When their wonder is 
stilled, He speaks to them of the Father, of 
the future Kingdom, of loyalty to Himself, 
of love to God and man, of obedience to 
God's will, of the Comforter to come, of 
the redemption of all the world, of His 
unfailing presence, of the place prepared 
for them. When the forty glorious days, 
radiant with the blessed communion with 
Him, are at an end, they are so unshakably 
convinced of His exalted sovereignty over 
life and of His place with God, that with no 
misgivings do they bid Him farewell as He 
ascends to the Father. He was their liv- 
ing Lord, their reigning Messiah. 

To this fact they bore witness in ever- 
broadening circles. Upon this event the 
Church based itself. To declare it, became 

48 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

the passion of the followers of Christ. Nor 
can their testimony be disputed. The 
proofs are infallible. If the validity of 
the evidence can be questioned, then the 
human mind can be certain of nothing. 
Then chaos everywhere in history! Then 
nothing is reliable. But the skeptic can 
not sneer out of court this momentous fact. 
The Christian Church has continued 
throughout all the centuries to repeat, 
"Raised from the dead," because these men 
and women who knew Him the best de- 
clared that they had seen Him alive again 
after His burial. And because we believe 
in the religious worth of those first followers, 
will we ever accept as authentic their testi- 
mony. Paul asked for nothing more than 
their evidence, nor need we. Dispute is 
impiety now; controversy is affrontery; 
contradiction is insanity. The resurrection 
was indubitable fact. Humanity begins 
a new era with its proclamation. As a 
religious truth it is the very apex of God's 
loving revelations to men. 

And never is the Church of the risen 
Christ surer of the reality of His resurrec- 
4 49 



THE RESURRECTION 

tion than when it investigates the attacks 
of those def amers of all religion who would 
disparage the belief in Christ's resurrec- 
tion. For the record of the risen Lord 
has always been, and will ever be, the chief 
point of attack of those wild iconoclasts 
who, denying the existence of God, would 
undermine all religion of whatever kind. 
They realize that if His resurrection can be 
disproven, the entire Christian system falls 
into ruin, never to rise again. Equally 
well do they appreciate that, if this can be 
demonstrated a fact, a divine authority of 
sublimest impressiveness is given at once 
to every detail of the life and message of 
Christ. 

Consequently the most . fanatical at- 
tacks have been made against this claim 
of Christ's victory over death. The ration- 
alists have denied that He actually died. 
Unable to question the convincing weight 
of testimony in favor of this reappearance, 
Buhrt does not hesitate to impute dis- 
honesty to Christ and to allege a deliberate 
fraud in Christ Himself. To such desperate 
straits is this disbeliever forced, in his 

50 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

efforts to disparage Christ, that he asserts 
that Christ connived with His disciples to 
deceive the Jewish authorities into believing 
that He was dead upon the cross, so that 
later, His body having been rescued from 
the grave and by medical attention re- 
stored to its former physical vigor, He 
might appear among them, and circulation 
be given to the belief that He had been 
resurrected. 

But against such a preposterous charge 
of pious fraud by Christ and His disciples 
even Strauss protests. Equally untenable 
is Keim's theory that by the crucifixion 
the youthful body of Christ, weakened by 
no passions, did not lose its vital forces, 
and that having been laid away in the tomb, 
He gradually revived, was rescued, nursed 
by His friends, later to make His reap- 
pearance. But all such theories are made 
ridiculous by gross improbabilities. Less 
faith is required to believe outright in the 
resurrection, than in many of the striking 
coincidences upon which the denial of 
Christ's reappearances are made to rest. 
By no such methods could Christ ever 

51 



THE RESURRECTION 

have made upon His followers those pro- 
found impressions of being, "The Victor 
over Death," "the Prince of Life." In- 
credible to think of so pitiful a Christ be- 
coming an object of passionate faith, of 
exalted emotions, or being heralded as 
a risen Conqueror and the Son of God. 
There is no sane reason for questioning 
the fact of His death. Who can doubt 
that those fanatical persecutors and those 
brutal Roman soldiers made sure of their 
victim's decease? 

Nor is Strauss' well-known but puerile 
"vision-theory" any more damaging to 
the belief in Christ's death and resurrec- 
tion. Forced to admit that the "astound- 
ing revulsions from the deep depression 
and utter hopelessness of the disciples at 
the death of Jesus, to the strong faith and 
enthusiasm with which they proclaimed 
Him as Messiah, would be inexplicable 
unless something had happened which had 
convinced them of His resurrection," he 
contends that what they interpreted as the 
reality of a risen Christ was, after all, but 
a subjective vision. But those disciples 

52 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

were not thus easily deceived. It is in- 
credible to imagine that out of the hun- 
dreds that are reported as eye-witnesses, all 
were deceived, or that there were no skep- 
tical conservatives competent to distinguish 
between reality and the creations of the 
imagination. Even Strauss himself, in later 
life, repudiated his own theory, still held 
to by some, as being inadequate to account 
for the "quick revulsion of the feelings of 
the disciples which led them within a few 
days after Christ's death to believe in His 
resurrection." Not subjective visions, but 
the objective appearances of the risen 
Christ led them to their epochal faith. 
Renan may lend his brilliant powers to the 
support of the "vision hypothesis," but 
the thoughtful Christian world, habituated 
to weighing evidence, will still steadfastly 
refuse to believe that the appearances of 
Christ were an "epidemic illusion." If 
these were illusions they involved the mis- 
taken reports, not merely of sight, but also 
of hearing and touch. We smile at Renan's 
statement wherein he pompously declares 
that the nervous imagination of one woman, 

53 



THE RESURRECTION 

Mary Magdalene, at the sepulcher, has 
changed the state of the world. 

Irreligion and skepticism and infidelity, 
having utilized all weapons of overthrow, 
have hopelessly failed to capture this 
stronghold of Christianity. Strauss, the 
most determined of all objectors in his op- 
position on critical grounds to Christianity, 
admits that in the resurrection of Jesus we 
have the decisive question, and that if the 
natural historical view fails to explain this, 
everything belonging to that view must 
be retracted. Well do the apologetes of 
Christ realize that if the reality of the resur- 
rection can be disproven, then discredit is 
cast upon the divine uniqueness of Christ's 
life; upon the truths He taught, and upon 
the momentous claims He made. But 
"the foundation of God standeth sure!" 
And we base our conviction upon the un- 
impeachable testimony of those eye-wit- 
nesses, in the providence of God called to 
be triumphant messengers of His transcend- 
ent truth. They were possessed by the 
sublime message. On no other basis can 
we account for them or their phenomenal 

54 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

success. As a writer says, "Something 
must have happened to change that band 
of fleeing disciples into world-defiers and 
world-conquerors. If there is no fact be- 
hind it, whence this new conviction, this 
mighty courage? The only adequate ex- 
planation is, to believe that what they said 
is true." The gates of death did actually 
swing open to let the Messiah, the trium- 
phant Christ, pass out as victor. They 
saw Him. They communed with Him. 
Their testimony is irrefutable. Never did 
it appear more convincing, more trust- 
worthy, more reasonable, than after the be- 
wildered skeptics have done their utmost 
to discredit it — and all in vain. He that 
was dead, lived again. 

Consequently Paul is invincible. His 
logic is irrefutable. His theology is forti- 
fied by scientific demonstration. His rea- 
son, as well as His faith, permits Him to 
believe in a God that can raise from the 
dead. Yonder are the many witnesses 
that supply the all-significant evidence. 
And to Paul's holy conviction we may cling 
with unshakable assurance. He was per- 

55 



THE RESURRECTION 

suaded as to the validity of his faith; we 
may be equally certain. He will not base 
his hope upon any shadowy assumptions. 
Neither need we. He was convinced be- 
yond the shadow of a doubt of the reality 
of his Lord's victory over death. We may 
have the same glorious hope. We may be- 
lieve with Paul, that through Christ the 
God who creates all things is making the 
climax revelation of the final victory of 
life over death. When we stand beside 
the new-made graves where our loved ones 
lie, we will remember that once in far-away 
Palestine God's Son broke through the bars 
of death — and His faithful ones recognized 
Him even after the mystery of death. And 
because He lives, we are to live also by the 
power of His resurrection. 



56 



CHAPTER III 

THE CORINTHIAN DOUBTERS AND 

THE DENIAL OF A 

RESURRECTION 



Cerebral physiology, when studied with the 
aid of molecular physics, is against the materialist 
as far as it goes. The materialistic assumption 
that the life of the soul ends with the life of the body 
is perhaps the most colossal instance of baseless 
assumption that is known to the history of phi- 
losophy. — Fiske. 

Matter is the vehicle of mind, but it is domi- 
nated and transcended by it. It is quite credible 
that our whole and entire personality is never 
terrestrially manifest. . . . The soul is that 
controlling and guiding principle which is re- 
sponsible for our personal expression and for the 
construction of the body under the restrictions 
of physical conditions. The body is its instrument 
or organ, enabling it to receive and to convey 
physical impressions and to affect and be affected 
by matter and energy. — Sir Oliver Lodge. 

What then, is man? He endures but for an 
hour, and is crushed before the moth. Yet in the 
being and in the working of a faithful man is there 
already (as all faith, from the beginning, gives assur- 
ance) a something that triumphs over time, and is, 
and will be, when time shall be no more. — Carlyle. 

After death the soul possesses self -consciousness, 
otherwise it would be the subject of spiritual death, 
which has already been disproved. With this 
self -consciousness remains personality and the con- 
sciousness of personal identity. — Kant. 

It is the sure fact of sleep which makes hope 
so reasonable, by giving the lie to every doctrine 
of extinction. — Thomson. 



CHAPTER III 

The Corinthian Doubters and the De- 
nial of a Resurrection. 

Now if Christ be preached that He rose from 
the dead, how say some among you that there is 
no resurrection of the dead? — Verse 12. 

It is not to be wondered at that in the Cor- 
inthian Church the doubter was present. 
He is present everywhere to-day when men 
meditate upon the mysterious spiritual re- 
alities. He is successor to Thomas of the 
apostolic group. To some of the teachings 
of Paul he gladly consented. They minis- 
tered to this religious life, and co-ordinated 
with his previous mental conclusions. But 
against Paul's cardinal message of the 
resurrection he protested. It seemed con- 
trary to reason, and contradictory to actu- 
ality, because beyond his comprehension. 
In a certain sense he was progenitor 
to the modern materialist. He made life 

59 



THE RESURRECTION 

synonymous with bodily existence. He de- 
nied that there was any abiding spiritual 
factor in man's personality that transcended 
his body. Man is but a physical organism. 
His body is but a chance aggregate of ma- 
terial atoms, in no sense essentially differing 
from other physical things about him. All 
phenomena of his existence that might be- 
token some spiritual agent using the body 
as its instrument and interacting upon it in 
some mutual interdependence, he accounted 
for as the strange consequence of physical 
alterations within himself. Thought, feel- 
ing, emotions, volition were all but mystic 
phases of these material atoms that had 
shaped themselves into a fleshly human 
body. If he had endeavored to explain the 
so-called spiritual side of man's nature, 
he might have done so in the terms of our 
arch-materialist of the present, Haeckel, 
and designated the soul a "misnomer," 
claiming that man has no soul, but only a 
succession of mental states. Between the 
mystic atoms there is some such interaction 
that these secrete thought and account for 
all mental phenomena. 

60 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

Consequently, when death touched the 
body, it was annihilated, and existence 
forever ceased. Could they not witness 
the process of physical disintegration? 
Could they not with their own eyes behold 
the beauty and power of the physical body 
decay, and see it crumble into dust, becom- 
ing part of nature again, to be absorbed 
into the earth, or dissipated into air, or 
furnishing nourishment for living things? 
Death was final conqueror. The tomb 
where man's body moldered away was his 
eternal resting-place. There was nothing 
that survived. As with the burning away 
of the candle disappeared at last the flame, 
so with the cessation of life disappeared the 
body also. There was no future for man's 
personality when death laid its heavy 
hand upon him. All that there was to him 
was laid away in the tomb to become prey 
at last to the irresistible force of disin- 
tegration. In the face of this physical 
spectacle it was folly to expect that there 
was any kind of a future existence for him 
after death. 

And with what pertinacity does the 
61 



THE RESURRECTION 

old, skeptical denial survive! The discov- 
eries of the laboratory are held to declare 
only the physical reality of man. Such a 
thing as soul is never detected by doctor 
or physicist or biologist. Mental facts are 
all produced by the physical organism. 
' 'The physical and the mental life appear 
together, advance together, fail together, 
and disappear together." The mental life 
is but a "function of the organism," which 
in itself is but a "special material aggre- 
gate." The body is supreme. The processes 
that seemingly have a spiritual basis and 
appear to be dependent upon some psychic 
agent for their being, are but refined ma- 
terial reactions. In all mental phenomena 
there are corresponding changes in the 
atomic arrangement of the cells of the brain. 
When the body fails, then memory and 
imagination and sensation and all other sim- 
ilar activities subside. The body controls 
all of these. When it ceases to functionize 
therefore, all existence must correspondingly 
cease. The hope of a future life is conse- 
quently, as Haeckel says, "the citadel of 
superstition." Death ends all. 

62 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

So reasons the materialist despite the 
careful logic of the alert psychologist who 
contends for the reality of personality, aside 
from the reality of the body. The modern 
investigator into the nature of man ac- 
knowledges that there is a most wonderful 
interdependence between body and spirit; 
that the body conditions mental activity; 
that there is some concomitant variation 
between thought and brain-cell movement; 
that accident or disease or age affect the 
activity of the spirit. But he concludes 
vastly greater things also. He declares 
that the body does not explain all the 
phenomena of life; that no sensation is 
possible without an abiding, active, psychic 
agent, able to receive external impressions 
and to interpret them; that this soul can 
not be identified with the body; that the 
spirit manifests its reality by countless 
activities; that as the musician rules his 
instrument, so does the spirit rule the body 
or its instrument through which a relation- 
ship is preserved to the external world; 
that this spirit, endowed by God, has 
creationary power to fashion the human 

63 



THE RESURRECTION 

body; and that no psychologist dare assert 
that there is nothing in man that can sur- 
vive the experience of his physical disin- 
tegration through death. Its verdict is 
unmistakable, and most convincingly pre- 
pares the way for the faith in the future 
life which Paul defended. 

But a second class of Corinthian doubter 
there was that refused to give a literal inter- 
pretation to Paul's statement of the resur- 
rection. To the thought of any kind of a 
bodily existence after death he protested. 
Matter in all form was essentially impure. 
Deliverance from the body could be con- 
sidered, therefore, only a blessing. In- 
fluenced by the teachings of some of the 
Greek philosophers and Gnostics, he con- 
ceived of everything physical as base and 
worthless. To have death free the spirit 
from its bodily form was to be welcomed 
as a most acceptable boon. The body was 
at the best but prison-house for the spirit, 
ever struggling to be free. As related to 
matter it was the very source and seat of all 
evil. It tainted the spirit. In it resided 
the evil passions, the base tendencies, the 

64 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

sinful appetites. Were it not for this 
body, man's spirit could easily be victori- 
ous. From the body came all temptations 
to sin. Ever it was defiling and debasing 
him. Inasmuch as it was base and worth- 
less, the highest task of the spirit was to 
mortify and subdue it, ever persevering 
in the struggle until at last death put an 
end to the battle and freed the spirit. 

To those Greeks, therefore, not of so 
gross a materialistic bias as utterly to deny 
the possibility of some kind of a future life, 
the belief in another existence, entirely 
without the trammels and hindrances of a 
physical body, was most eagerly welcomed. 
To be unclothed of this fleshly garment, 
that was a consummation most greatly to 
be desired. 

When Paul preached the resurrection, 
therefore, they gave it but an allegorical in- 
terpretation, as did Hymeneus and Philetus, 
of whom Paul speaks explicitly in his epistle 
to Timothy, claiming that the resurrection 
was past already. The term must be under- 
stood figuratively. The individual had his 
resurrection in one of two ways: First, 
5 65 



THE RESURRECTION 

when man's spirit turned from its sin and 
lived in righteousness, overcoming all the 
lusts and evil proclivities of the body, then 
did the man have his resurrection, passing 
from death to life. This was the climax 
to the soul life. Or when literal death 
came, and the spirit was liberated from the 
body, then could man be said to have ex- 
perienced his resurrection. But beyond 
this interpretation, the Corinthian doubter 
would not go. He either so spiritualized 
the word as to give it relevance only to a 
transformed life here — and denying any 
kind of future existence, or be contended 
that the freed spirit in some kind of a form- 
less condition continued to exist. He was 
satisfied to believe in death as separating 
the pure spirit of man from its evil environ- 
ment, and furnishing it with the longed- 
for opportunity to live in unobstructed 
freedom. Or he contented himself with the 
thought of an earthly life, however brief, 
in which the spirit had been made regnant. 
To believe in the resurrection from the 
grave was to debase a sublime spiritual 
truth into a meager material impossibility. 

66 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

The person who was walking in conscious 
fellowship with Christ according to His 
teachings, and who could say, "Old things 
are passed away, all things are become 
new," he needed no higher kind of a resur- 
rection. To live such a glorified earthly 
life — that was sufficient; to expect any- 
thing additional, that was folly. Existence 
had come to its holy climax when the good 
was supreme and evil had been mastered. 
The spirit's after-life in any outward form 
was therefore a sheer contradiction. 

To these two classes of deniers, whose 
erroneous beliefs were beginning to imperil 
the entire Christian message, Paul makes 
clear answer. Knowing full well that the 
false beliefs would "eat as does the gan- 
grene," untilthe entire Church was sickened 
unto death, he offers the antidote. 

He has but one answer to the doubters. 
He declares again, as incontrovertible fact, 
the resurrection of Christ. He will never 
lose sight of this mighty event. This 
proves irrefutably and forever the possi- 
bility and the reality of a resurrection. 
The denial of the possibility of a resur- 

67 



THE RESURRECTION 

rection is a denial of the actual return to 
life again of Christ. He who questions 
the immortal life, immediately invalidates 
the claims of Christ to a victory over 
death. If there is no possibility whatever 
of escape from the grave, then Christ did 
not escape. Then He is still dead. The 
denial for the race necessitates the denial 
for Christ equally. The universal must 
include the particular. Then the witnesses 
reported falsely, for death on that suppo- 
sition is the unbreakable, universal law. 
To its iron sway there can be no exceptions. 
Death is absolute. Its rule is everywhere. 
But Paul disproves the universal, by 
demonstrating the particular. Christ did 
arise. He broke through the seemingly 
iron law of death and demonstrated the 
possibility of renewed life after death. 
That He did so is an indisputable fact, at- 
tested by the many accredited witnesses. 
And this one historical event destroys all 
possible objections and silences forever all 
skeptics. By it God revealed a higher 
law than death, and under this mankind 
had its existence. By it He manifested 

68 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

to humanity a higher knowledge than had 
ever been vouchsafed *to the race. In 
Christ He makes known what was the final 
purpose of God, transcending even the law 
of death. 

Exactly what the resurrection is to be 
for mankind we do not know; but that 
there is a survival of man's spirit, in some 
bodily form, this fact the new life of Christ 
after His death unquestionably demon- 
strates. On what grounds, so argues Paul, 
dare the questioner base his denial, while 
the living, risen Christ Himself refutes 
the doubt? How can he claim to be a 
reasonable denier, in face of such incon- 
testable, unanimous evidence, to the Lord's 
survival after death? In face of such 
proof the doubt is the very climax of in- 
consistency. 

This is Christianity's final answer still 
to all the modern doubt that makes its 
attacks upon the after-life of man. We 
will call to our aid still the philosopher, 
weighted with his strong argument. We 
will appeal as never before to the psycholo- 
gist, to show that there is some agent, 

69 



THE RESURRECTION 

superior to the body, that uses it as a vio- 
linist does his instrument. But the con- 
clusive evidence in favor of the future life 
for man will be the resurrection of Christ. 
He brought immortality to light. The con- 
clusive disproof of the erroneous theories 
of the materialist is that once there was 
a being, called Christ, who survived the 
grave. He was crucified to the death and 
committed to the tomb. But He returned 
to life again! He once for all, therefore, 
invalidates the charge as to the impossi- 
bility of an after-life. This one clear fact 
makes forever ridiculous all the guesses 
and the theories of the skeptic who inter- 
prets man merely as an aggregate of atoms 
having no high spiritual destiny through 
the gift of God. 

Paul's reasoning convincingly demon- 
strates also the essential unity between 
Christ and mankind. He was mankind's 
high representative in all things. What 
was possible for Him was possible for all. 
Evidently there was a certain class in 
Corinth who refused to classify Christ in 
His experiences with the rest of humanity. 

70 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

By thus claiming, did they hope to dis- 
parage the significance of His resurrection, 
to which they were reluctantly driven. 
But Paul, seeing the damaging consequences 
from such an admission, refutes the prem- 
ise. In not the slightest degree will he 
acknowledge a disparity in human nature 
between Christ and man. Whatever had 
been mankind's lot had been His, by His 
entrance into the life of humanity as its 
incarnated Savior, and by all human ex- 
periences from birth to death through 
which He had voluntarily passed. But 
His identification with the race proves 
conversely, also, that what was His final 
lot was to be the experience of humanity. 
As the Son of God He was also the Son of 
man, and showed how completely He could 
participate with man in his experiences. 
But in Him man sees also what is to be 
his own destiny. Christ is humanity's ex- 
emplar. His resurrection, therefore, proves 
ours. 

The Master came into the world to 
demonstrate by His life and death and 
resurrection what was the normal rule for 

71 



THE RESURRECTION 

humankind. His life was not exempted 
from human restrictions or earthly temp- 
tations. He was like unto one of us, 
except in His sinlessness. Being subject 
to all the limitations of the race, He must 
therefore submit Himself to the climax 
calamity of man's earthly existence. He 
must fall under the stroke of death! Like 
any human being, He must go through the 
gates of the tomb. He must drink the 
bitter cup. And by submitting to death, 
He demonstrates His complete identifica- 
tion with the race of mortals, of which He 
claimed to be an essential part. 

Through just this fundamental unity 
with mankind does His resurrection have 
its stupendous significance. Humanity can 
not be interpreted as excluded from Christ's 
triumphs. There is not one law for Him, 
and another for us. We are sharers with 
Him in all His victories. He demonstrates 
that the after-life, to which He had become 
inheritor by the power of God, was to be 
the priceless possession of all. Through 
the gift of God, what He became, we are 
to become — victors over the grave! Be- 

72 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

cause He was raised we are to be raised 
also. His triumph foretells ours. He 
proved the higher law, under which life 
was to continue. Inasmuch as by His 
incarnation does He show His identification 
with us, by His resurrection does He proph- 
esy our complete spiritual identification 
with Him in a glorified future. 

There is no escaping Paul's logic. In- 
terpret human nature in such a manner 
as to deny the possibility of life after death, 
then the actuality of His resurrection is 
utterly invalidated, and the testimony of 
the Christian witnesses is impeached. They 
are heralds of a black lie. Nor can the 
alternative view be admitted, that Christ 
wa not typically human, and consequently 
not subject to all the physical laws govern- 
ing mankind. He was characteristically, 
typically, one with us. The manifold stra- 
tegic events of His earthly life showed Him 
to be a true sharer in the essence of human 
nature. He could not even escape death. 
And by this very participation with us in 
our earthly life does His resurrection secure 
its strategic significance. We can not doubt 

73 



THE RESURRECTION 

that in this, as in all other things, is His 
likeness to us proven, and our likeness to 
Him established. In Him we see what 
we are to become. Does He rise triumph- 
ant? Then we need never doubt what 
destiny God has for us. 

And to this sublime conclusion will 
the spirit of man persistently hold when 
doubt assails. Does materialism blatantly 
shout its denial of any after-life? Then the 
Christian, calm in his majestic faith in Ja 
Christ raised from the dead, will point to 
Him. Was He, the Son of man, raised by 
the will of God, out of the power of death? 
Then shall all those who are essentially 
related to Him, by faith and love as well 
as by the ties of the body, expect to have 
God bestow upon them a future life. 



74 



CHAPTER IV 

THE DENIAL AS INVALIDATING 

THE RESURRECTION OF 

CHRIST 



If Christ is a revelation of God in the sinless- 
ness of His life, how is it possible to determine a 
priori that He is not also a further revelation of 
of God in the wonder of His resurrection? His 
resurrection is a fact of the largest ethical and re- 
ligious significance. It endorses His claims. It 
adds a fresh manifestation of power over the 
world and death and sin. It means the complete 
subordination of the natural to the spiritual. — 
Simpson. 

In the case of a person so extraordinary as Jesus, 
even the greatest miracle might be accepted as 
an actual occurrence, and it might not seem in- 
credible that the dead body, after having been laid 
in the rock grave, was resuscitated and restored 
to life by God. — Holtzman. 

The resurrection of Jesus satisfies the con- 
science and the heart. — Reischle. 

Faith and trust in God can not be founded on 
one who continues dead. — Zahn. 



CHAPTER IV 

The Denial as Invalidating the Res- 
urrection of Christ 

But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then 
is Christ not risen: — Verse 13. 

Paul's task of convincing the Corinthian 
doubters was no easy one. Holding so 
tenaciously to doctrines contrary to the 
fundamental teachings of Paul, they did not 
hesitate to alter their premises and with- 
draw their admissions, lest they be driven 
into uncomfortable conlusions by his com- 
pelling logic. Having been entirely willing 
at the beginning of their Christian careers 
to receive the doctrine of a resurrected 
Christ, some of them, learning that they 
could not concede the resurrection of the 
Master without admitting the possibility 
of the resurrection of all mankind, refused 
further to make the concession as to Christ. 

77 



THE RESURRECTION 

Inasmuch as the acknowledgment of His 
survival carried with it the possibility of an 
after-life for all — to which conclusion they 
steadfastly refused to hold — they radically 
changed their admissions as to the reality 
of His triumph over death. They argued 
now that they must have been in error in 
supposing'that He was alive. Their former 
beliefs concerning Him must accordingly 
be changed. They were compelled, in 
order to be consistent with their denial, to 
conclude that He was dead still, and that 
in reality no resurrection had ever come to 
Him. 

And into this lamentable conclusion 
does the modern skeptic find himself 
plunged. For materialistic reasons, being 
under the dominance of presuppositions 
which exclude an after-life to any, he must 
deny, per necessity, the survival of Christ. 
He did not escape the inexorable law. 
He was annihilated by death. The tomb 
conquered in His case as in all others. 
God could not raise Him to new life. The 
world is pitifully deceived and ignorantly 
deluded when it supposes that He lives. 

78 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

Imagination has outlawed reason, theory 
has displaced fact in this erroneous belief. 
No such thing ever happened as the open- 
ing of the tomb, and the exit of Him 
whom it held in its granite hands. He 
foretold His resurrection, but it did not 
occur any more than it does with the multi- 
tudes buried since His day. The grave 
knows no victor. 

But Paul is not without an immediate 
refutation of the erroneous contention. 
In answering those who, despite all the 
historical proofs, deny His resurrection, 
Paul enters upon a new line of argument to 
make credible the belief in some kind of a 
resurrection life. Heretofore he has ap- 
pealed to eye-witnesses to substantiate his 
claims. Now he refers to the serious con- 
sequences that would inevitably follow, 
were the denial true. And by the very 
seriousness of the results does he prove the 
incredibility of the denial. Keen-witted 
logician that he is, Paul forces the skeptics 
to face the direful effects of their bad 
reasoning. 

Primary to all other consequences of 
79 



THE RESURRECTION 

this universal denial of a resurrection, — 
the one upon which Paul must have dwelt 
with most sorrowful meditation, — was this. 
If there is no resurrection, then is Christ 
not risen. The tomb still holds Him. The 
grave still conquers. He did not triumph 
over death. The hope of the race in Him 
is baseless. 

But consider what momentous bearings 
such a conclusion has. This shatters the 
Christian system as a massive oak is 
shivered by the lightning. This overthrows 
the new religion as beautiful, stately temples 
are shaken down by the Titan earthquake. 

Who was this Christ? What claims did 
He make? What kind of life did He live? 
What prophecies fell from His lips? What 
hopes did His followers have concerning 
Him? What impression did He make upon 
those that came under His mysterious 
spell? He claimed to be the Son of God, 
the promised Messiah for whom Israel and 
the world had been eagerly waiting, and to 
whom all mankind must look for redemp- 
tion. He made extraordinary statements 
as to His powers and His future. His mis- 

80 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

sion was to establish the longed-for King- 
dom of God among men. He endeavored 
by His principles and example to transform 
mankind into a loving brotherhood. He 
asserted His unique relationship with God 
for a special divine purpose. He was ever 
affirming that as Lord of Life He had come 
to bring the life more abundant. He 
seemed to know completely the outcome of 
His life, and calmly prophesied His resur- 
rection after His death. 

Of this there can be no doubt. He 
lived in communion with God as no other 
human being ever did. He spoke such 
majestic words as had never been heard by 
human ears before. He walked among 
men like a King receiving homage for His 
greatness, His goodness, His power. De- 
spite all misunderstanding, all opposition, 
all persecution, He obeyed unswervingly 
the will of God, and did unfalteringly the 
vast work entrusted to Him. No moral 
hero like unto this teacher, claiming to be 
the Son of Mary and Son of God, and willing 
to go to the cross for the sake of the tre- 
mendous truths He so bravely declared! 
6 81 



THE RESURRECTION 

Not the hatred of the jealous Pharisees nor 
the persecution of the scornful Scribes nor 
the pitiful unresponsiveness of the fickle 
crowd could dissuade Him from the holy 
course laid out for Him by God. 

Think also of the glory of His character. 
In those qualities of spirit that mark the 
man of transcendent spiritual greatness, 
how majestic He was! In Him in amazing 
abundance there had blossomed out all 
those character-virtues that lie dormant 
in other men. He could love with a change- 
less affection. It altered not, despite the 
unworthiness, the vacillation, the weak- 
nesses, the sins of those to whom He so 
regally gave Himself. He thought never 
of self. He withheld nothing, if only men 
might be brought to love God. He re- 
sisted the insinuating power of temptation. 
Sin found no frailty in Him. He was 
perfectly surrendered to the will of God. 
Never before, never since, has the human 
spirit burst forth into such wondrousness of 
beauty and power as in Him. Pilate voices 
the verdict of the ages, "I find no fault 
in Him." He is the world's perfect man. 

82 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

Because of what He was and because of 
the life that He lived was His crucifixion the 
blackest tragedy of all history. No wonder 
that when He died the heavens draped 
themselves in pall at sight of this climax 
infamy. Men killed Him who claimed to 
be the Son of God. Human sin displayed 
to what hideous extents black rebellion and 
hideous unspirituality could go when it 
crucified Him of the faultless life. To such 
perfidy and degradation had the race sunken 
that when He came to His own, in His holy 
self-sacrifice and in His majestic love, His 
own nailed Him to the cross. Hanging 
between thieves He, the Holy One, ends His 
tempest-smitten life. Disgraced, dishon- 
ored, defeated, His mangled body is laid 
into the tomb. 

But concerning the dead, entombed 
Christ, certain tremendous questions persist 
in forcing themselves into our minds. For 
such a Being as He does God have nothing 
in store but the cross? Is this the reward 
for His unswerving obedience, His high 
fidelity, His boundless love? Does God 
care no more for Him than do the blood- 

83 



THE RESURRECTION 

thirsty Pharisees hounding Him to the 
death? After the shame, the bitter ig- 
nominy, the cruel disgrace, was there no 
exaltation, no glorification, no everlasting 
honor? After the majestic self-sacrifice 
was there no abundant success? After the 
hatred, the misunderstanding, the perse- 
cution from men, was there no soothing 
approval from God's lips? After a career 
glorified by such goodness and heroism 
and unselfishness, was there nothing but the 
consuming tomb? 

Unless there was the resurrection there was 
nothing but annihilation for this high, this 
Holy One. His life had no special meaning 
in the sight of God. His prophecies were 
mistaken, His statements were base de- 
ceptions, His claims were rankest perfidies 
The story of His life ends with the tomb 
that holds His pierced body. The con- 
ceited, deluded, impious pretender, He 
received His dues when death gripped 
Him! 

But the admission as to His non-resur- 
rection has most direful implications. It in- 
volves God. We may hurl terrible charges 

84 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

against Him if there is no after-life for 
Christ. Through all of His brave, trying 
ministry Christ had been endeavoring to 
teach the lesson of trust in God. God 
was the Father. The world was in His 
keeping. He controlled it for the welfare 
of His children. He fed the sparrow. He 
fashioned the dust into the beauty and 
fragrance of the lily. He was so inti- 
timately interested in the lives of His own 
that the very hairs of our heads were 
numbered. All that our natures needed 
He would supply with a Heavenly Parent's 
wisdom and affection. Food, raiment, com- 
panionship, even the Holy Spirit would God 
give because we were the children of His 
love. God had delight in caring for His 
own. Man's every requirement could be 
brought to God in calm trustfulness. So 
taught Christ. Just so did Christ live in 
His entire communion with God. 

But unless there was a resurrection for 
Christ, then His trust in God was a pitiful 
error. In vain did He look to God in the 
time of His deepest need. His conviction 
as to God's interest and assistance was 

85 



THE RESURRECTION 

baseless. His trust was ill-founded. God, 
in reality, did not have this intimate regard 
for man's welfare. When Christ, in the 
hour of His darkest experience, looked to 
God the Creator's face was turned. He 
did not hear His prayers. When Christ 
calmly committed His spirit to God the 
Creator was too heartless or too powerless 
to care. He was impotent to safeguard 
His own. The stupendous machinery of 
the universe was not in God's controlling 
hand, working for the good of His children. 
He was a helpless engineer, feeble before 
the attacks of death. He has no mighty 
sovereignty over nature. He can not even 
so control the physical laws that His only- 
begotten Son shall escape from the tyranny 
of the grave. But if this is so, then mankind 
will never trust God. A weakling God on 
the throne will never win the love and wor- 
ship of humanity. Then all confidence in 
Him is ill-placed. If God does not honor 
such an exalted life as Christ's, what con- 
fidence can frail men have in Him? Why 
should they try to serve Him? Why should 
they hope for guidance from Him? Why 

86 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

should they strive to do His will, if God 
places no high valuation upon their char- 
acters and can not safeguard them? All 
true spiritual communion with God be- 
comes forever impossible, if God is such a 
Being as to give no resurrection life to this 
Christ who so triumphantly lived to God's 
honor. 

Again, if Christ is not raised, then God 
is not love. There is no escaping the con- 
clusion that if God was animated by a true 
love for His Son, He would honor Him with 
the display of all divine powers in Christ's 
behalf. His love would find some way of 
escape, some method of victory for Christ 
after His tempestuous, earthly life. After 
He had done so faithfully the Father's will, 
after He had walked so heroically the steep 
ascent of Calvary, surely God would not 
forsake Him! Had God's heart turned 
stony as the Pharisees? Was there no 
more pity in God than in the Roman soldier 
that plunged the sword into Christ's side? 
Was God as fickle as the ignorant mob? 
Would God betray Christ as did Judas? 
Had God's loyalty vanished into cowardice 

87 



THE RESURRECTION 

as did Peter's when he denied the Lord? 
Had God's affection turned into winter- 
chill toward Him who so regally had finished 
the work entrusted to Him? God could 
not have loved Him and then deserted 
Him forever to the wild hatred of His 
tormentors. God could not have loved 
Him and let His life go out forever in such 
a tempest of scorn and ignorance and vio- 
lence! God could not have loved Him and 
let the calm assurance, the peaceful trust of 
Christ's regal soul go unrecognized, unre- 
warded. If God loved Him, there must be 
for Christ more than ignominy and shame 
and hatred and defeat. There must be 
glory, honor, recognition, love, worship, 
eternal life. Unless these royal tributes 
are paid to Christ by God, what can prevent 
mankind, in bewilderment and mistrust, 
from crying out that He who rules over 
man's pitiful destiny is a Molock, not a 
Father? 

But even more deeply than this does 

the denial of Christ's resurrection implicate 

God. It raises a gloomy doubt as to the 

moral nature of God. The very essence 

88 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

of our conviction concerning the moral 
regimen of God is that good finally prevails, 
that evil is under God's displeasure and 
must be eventually destroyed. But never 
before in the history of the world were 
good and evil, righteousness and unright- 
eousness, juxtaposed in such striking con- 
trast as in the career of Christ. Compare 
His goodness, His spirituality, His unselfish- 
ness, His obedience with the sinister evil, 
the gross unspirituality, the hideous selfish- 
ness, the consummate hard-heartedness of 
His implacable enemies. On whose side 
is God? Is He conscious of moral exalted- 
ness and moral obliquity? Whose cause 
will God espouse? Toward the victory of 
whose principles will God lend His divine 
energies? If He does not aid the good, 
and set upon righteousness the seal of His 
divine approval, then the universe is rotten 
at the heart! A holy God will bring 
victory to the holiness of Christ. God 
must honor righteousness and frown upon 
evil. He must exalt those who gladly do 
His bidding. He will not leave mankind 
in uncertainty as to which is acceptable in 

89 



THE RESURRECTION 

His sight — whether the obedient, righteous 
Christ, or His blind, bigoted, sin-bound 
enemies. By every means within His power 
must God demonstrate His approval of 
moral excellencies and His support of spirit- 
ual fundamentals. If in His effort to do this 
it is necessary to resort to the unique and 
the extraordinary, or to break through the 
general laws of divine procedure in nature, 
the Moral Governor of the Universe will 
do so. Even the sentence of death will be 
annulled in the sight of all mankind to call 
all-significant attention to God's approval 
of those spiritual essentials for which Christ 
came into the world. Only thus can God 
vindicate Himself, in the sight of outraged 
humanity, from the charge of faithlessness 
and moral depravity. 

By an irresistible stress are we com- 
pelled to believe that a life like that of 
Christ, so holy in word, so sublime in 
thought, so glorious in deed, so utterly in 
accord with what we think is the will of 
God, — will have itself validated by God. 
Its work will not fail, unaccomplished. But 
unless there is a resurrection, then Christ's 

90 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

work ends with His pitiful death, and God 
cares nothing for its outcome. His death 
seemed to overthrow forever all for which 
He so bravely had stood. His cause is 
ruined; His truths are suffocated; His light 
is put out; His principles are crushed; His 
heroisms are meaningless; His faithfulness 
is in vain; His loyalty is useless; His moral 
fortitude is farcical; His promises are de- 
ceptive; His hopes are baseless; His claims 
are impious. 

But Christ is raised from the dead! 
He lives in resurrection glory. And because 
of this central fact is God's honor vindi- 
cated. He has caused the good to triumph 
as He found it in the unparalleled life of 
Christ. He shows the utter impotency of 
evil by calling again into life Him whom evil 
had killed. He puts the seal of His holy 
approval upon the truths Christ uttered 
by bringing to pass the prophecies Christ 
had uttered concerning His own survival, 
thus declaring Him to be, indeed, "the 
Truth." The resurrection thus becomes 
final witness to the moral nature of God. 
He is not indifferent to moral values. Those 

91 



THE RESURRECTION 

that do His will are the acceptable ones in 
His sight. He will alter the very primal 
laws of nature, if only by conferring a 
resurrection upon Christ He can proclaim 
to all mankind the glory of Christ and the 
triumph of His righteousness. 

Other consequences equally serious flow 
out of the denial of Christ's resurrection. 
The worthfulness of Christ Himself is at- 
tacked. That is no erroneous instinct of 
the Church which has led it to interpret 
Christ's resurrection as the supreme proof 
of His Messiahship and as the final vindi- 
cation of His principles. His resurrection 
has incalculable theological significance. 
By the light of this miraculous fact un- 
questioned validity is given to all that 
Christ claimed and taught and was. Was 
He a wild visionary, a deluded fanatic, 
an imbecile egotist, a scheming imposter, 
an impious deceiver? Through the criti- 
cisms hurled at Christ by the ever-present 
skeptics, we are unwillingly compelled to 
ask these searching questions concerning 
our beloved Master. He asserted His one- 
ness with God, His unique sovereignty over 

92 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

nature, His rulership over mankind; His 
prerogative as final judge of all the nations; 
His Kingship in the realm of character; 
His mastery over death; His lordship over 
a future Kingdom of redeemed souls. Was 
He mistaken when He uttered these start- 
ling sublimities? Did His blind egotism 
unbalance His judgment? Did His colossal 
ambition lead Him to foolish pretense? 
Were His prophecies but hollow mockeries 
and shocking impieties? So thought His 
infuriated persecutors as they led Him 
away to Golgotha. The cross would end 
His ravings. The plunging sword of the 
Roman soldier would proclaim as to whether 
Caesar ruled or Christ. Deserted by His 
despised, craven-hearted followers, the na- 
tion would see the pitiful ridiculousness of 
His wild pretenses. The ignominy of His 
death would demonstrate the blackness of 
His impiety. Exposed, humiliated, dis- 
credited, scorned, defeated, this revolution- 
ary Galilean peasant must pay by His 
annihilation the penalty of His misdeeds. 
With what measureless satisfaction, with 
what fiendish glee did His tormentors lead 

93 



THE RESURRECTION 

Him away to be crucified! When the 
sword and the nails had done their tragic 
work, then did His enemies know that this 
one who had so disturbed their nation was 
forever put out of the way! 

But God disproved the base slanders, 
the hideous lies of the persecutors of Christ ! 
He raised from the dead this One who had 
been killed. He called Him into a new life, 
thus vindicating all of Christ's claims and 
approving Him as the world's Messiah. 
Had this divine phenomenon not occurred, 
what reason would the benighted world 
ever have had to evaluate Him as anything 
but the visionary, the defeated reformer, 
the culprit? We are rescued from such 
sinister conclusions only as we believe that 
God called the Holy Christ back into life 
again; that He approved His life and forever 
honored His teaching. By this amazing 
token do we know that Christ's life in all 
of its wonderfulness, and His death in all 
of its pitifulness, were acceptable offerings 
to God; that His teachings were everlasting 
truth, from which not a jot or tittle should 
disappear; that His character is the tower- 

94 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

ing ideal of all personality ; that His prophe- 
cies were the secret revelations of the Most 
High. Because Christ was so unique in 
His life does God make Him so extraordi- 
nary in His exemption from the sovereignty 
of death. Through this astounding mir- 
acle do we see God's rebuke of mankind's 
heartless rebellion, His sanction of holiness, 
His divine purpose of final victory over 
death. 

Paul argues with masterful power when 
he concludes that the thought of the non- 
resurrection of Christ is an abhorrent im- 
possibility; and that His resurrection is 
irrefutable demonstration of God's purpose 
of eternal life for all that, like Christ, do 
His high bidding. Because Christ arose, 
we are to arise also! 



95 



CHAPTER V 

THE DENIAL AS REPUDIATING THE 
CHRISTIAN FAITH 



What would be the condition of any of us if 
we had not the hope of immortality? What 
ground is there to rest upon but the gospel? There 
were scattered hopes of the immortality of the soul, 
especially among the Jews. The Romans never 
reached it; the Greeks never received it. There 
were intimations, crepuscular twilight; but — but — 
but God, in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, brought 
life and immortality to light. — Daniel Webster, on 
his deathbed. 

The day, when from the dead 
Our Lord arose, then everywhere, 
Out of darkness and despair, 
Triumphant over fears and foes, 
The souls of His disciples rose. 

Immortality is the glorious discovery of Chris- 
tianity. — Channing. 

The crowning glory of Christianity is that it 
has wiped the tears from eyes which had failed, 
with wakefulness and sorrow, and shed victorious 
tranquillity upon those who have seen the shades 
of death closing around them. — Macaulay. 



CHAPTER V 

The Denial as Repudiating the Chris- 
tian Faith 

And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching 
vain, and your faith is also vain. — Verse H. 

And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; 
ye are yet in your sins. — Verse 17. 

That the denial of the resurrection empties 
the Gospel of its message, and by destroying 
faith in the Christian system makes im- 
possible the life of highest righteousness, 
this is Paul's further contention. The 
denier must face this also, as one of the dire- 
ful results of his unbelief. Paul holds un- 
swervingly to the conviction that the 
Christian life, with all the marked beauty 
of its holiness, is unattainable without this 
cardinal faith in the risen Lord. 

At first thought we are quite unready 
99 



THE RESURRECTION 

to admit the sanity of Paul's contention. 
This is a most striking assertion, that the 
denial of the resurrection so reacts upon life 
as to make impossible the salvation from 
sin, and that there is, in reality, no message 
worth declaring if this be questioned. To 
speak about God and to declare the glory 
of this life, that seems a sublime enough 
message for any preacher. But Paul's 
keen insight into the implications of any 
belief led him to recognize that before there 
can be any saving faith in God, there must 
be a clear understanding of what His at- 
titude is toward man, and what methods 
God has for overthrowing sin in the heart 
of man. How can man come off victorious 
in the savage contest against sin? How 
can he rise to those sublime heights of 
character, where holiness shall possess him, 
and all evil be displeasing to him? Paul 
contends that only as man believes in God 
as the divine helper, — all-powerful to assist, 
controlling all earthly forces for man's 
spiritual development, and opening up to 
man an eternal existence, — can true sub- 
limity of character ever be attained. 
100 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

Any interpretation of God that does not 
understand Him as having sufficient power 
to raise His own Son from the dead, this 
constitutes an empty message. In such 
a God men are not interested. Him they 
will not worship. An impotent God can 
not expect to win the reverence and love 
of men. Men will not listen to any word 
concerning Him, nor will they feel drawn 
to Him. Such a God will hold no sway 
over their lives. His commands will not be 
heeded. Humankind will not strive to bring 
character into conformity with His laws. 
If He was powerless to help His own Son 
against death, how can He be expected 
to help men in their struggles against sin? 
Christ's holy life was one long protest, one 
heroic battle against the tyranny of sin in* 
the world. He claimed to be able to de- 
liver men from it. Therefore was He called 
Jesus. And more than aught else did the 
world need to be rescued from the mastery 
of unrighteousness. But lo, sinful men 
killed Christ ! He, too, had to succumb to 
its brute supremacy. Against its might 
He seemed helpless. Surely in His death 
101 



THE RESURRECTION 

sin had forever conquered. Instead of being 
victor, He was victim. 

But what was God's attitude toward 
Christ in life and death? Will God send 
Him into the world only to declare His 
great truths and to live the sinless life, or 
will God rebuke sin by demonstrating 
Christ's superiority over sin grown murder- 
ous? Only by one means can God reveal 
Christ's final victory over sin. He must 
make Christ triumph over the death that 
sin inflicted upon Him. He must undo, 
by raising the holy Christ to life again, 
what sinful men did when they slew Him. 
Otherwise Christ failed in His work, and 
sin still reigned and the power of sin is 
supreme in men's hearts. 

Unless by a new existence after death 
Christ was privileged and empowered to 
continue His life, then there is no escaping 
the conclusion that the regime of evil in 
the hearts of men is stronger than the King- 
dom of God which found its highest repre- 
sentatives in the righteous Christ. But 
by Christ's resurrection is God known to 
be sovereign over even the disobedience of 
102 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

man. He is not impotent to overthrow it. 
God acknowledges Christ's sacrificial life 
as acceptable. His w^ork was satisfactory. 
Unless God raises Him from the death into 
which the sin of man plunged Him, then 
God can have no final dominance over evil. 
The proof of His power to save men from 
sin is His power to raise Christ from the 
dead. Men have confidence in God to 
break the power of evil habit and to in- 
augurate for mankind a new order of right- 
eousness as they behold Him, in loving 
omnipotence, call His Son back from death 
into a new, exalted life. If He does not 
have power and love enough to rescue 
Christ' from the grave, then He can not, 
by any means, be conceived as having love 
and power to forgive men from their sin 
and to rescue them from its tyranny. 

Such a message is of supreme signifi- 
cance, because it reveals to us an omnipotent 
God, loving righteousness and pledged to 
safeguard the spirit that sets itself to the 
task of resisting evil, and supremely in- 
terested in the perpetuation of holy charac- 
ter. God must be under the solemn neces- 
103 



THE RESURRECTION 

sity of doing this, else He Himself is devoid 
of moral greatness, and men, as they grow 
moral, will reject Him. God must be on 
the side of man and must grant final, ever- 
lasting victory to the soul that does His 
will. What shall we think of a God who 
would minister merely to the body and 
perpetuate it from year to year by His 
wonderful physical providences through 
supplying it with all necessary nourish- 
ment, who would desert His children at 
the hour of death, and disregard the moral 
hungers of their souls? A God who loves 
and regards the spirits of His children 
throughout eternity is vastly more neces- 
sary to faith than a God who cares merely 
for their bodies, and then lets them be an- 
nihilated by death, irrespective of their 
moral worthfulness. 

But Paul did not so think of God. He 
did not so preach Him. His God was the 
defender of the good, the protector of the 
righteous, the friend of the distressed, the 
helper of the aspiring, the rewarder of the 
faithful, the seeker after the sinful. What 
His ceaseless interest in man is God revealed 
104 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

by His supreme act of loving concern in 
Christ, whom He raised from the dead. 
And such preaching is not "empty" or 
"vain." It has a sublime content to 
which, with passionate interest, mankind 
will listen. 

Again Paul adds that unless Christ is 
raised from the dead, "your faith is also 
vain." Only by the resurrection was Christ 
proven to be the Son of God. That He 
might awaken in the hearts of all men a 
faith in Christ as God's Son, that was 
the purpose of Paul's preaching. He pro- 
foundly recognized that if this conviction 
concerning Christ could ever seize the 
hearts of men, then He would be accepted 
as the supreme example; then His work 
would hold mighty authority; then. His 
character would be the sacred goal toward 
which all personality must move; then He 
would be worshiped as the very source of 
life, operating upon mankind not merely 
to regenerate their lives, but also to rescue 
from death. Christ's resurrection would 
certify to His Lordship. If God should 
honor Him with a resurrection, that would 
105 



THE RESURRECTION 

forever establish Christ's right to primacy 
in the realm of character. It would give 
Him ceaseless, unquestioned authority over 
the thoughts and words and deeds of man- 
kind. 

Nor can too great emphasis be placed 
upon the authority of Christ as grounded in 
His resurrection. Why does all the Christian 
world build so implicitly upon the princi- 
ples of Christ, preferring His truths above all 
others? Why is all conduct measured by 
His standards? Why is His sway ever broad- 
ening among the race of men? Why is He 
coming to be, with increasing inevitable- 
ness, the one Being above all human beings 
to whom mankind gives its holiest love? 
The answer is not far to seek. Because 
He is the Son of God proven to be such 
by the miracle of His resurrection. By 
this fact did God set His seal of approval 
upon Him, and cause His to be the name 
above every name. If Christ was not 
raised, there is no all-convincing proof 
that He is not only an earnest but deluded 
peasant, making preposterous claims and 
dying upon the cross as a penalty for His 
106 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

recklessness and impious assumption. Our 
implicit trust in Him vanishes at once 
unless we know that He who spake such 
marvelous words and worked such marvel- 
ous deeds is the Divine Son, approved as 
such by His victory over the grave. If He 
is raised then we are compelled to ac- 
knowledge His unique authority and ascribe 
all honor to Him and obey Him with com- 
plete abandon and assist Him with most 
unswerving loyalty to establish His Divine 
Kingdom everywhere. Doubt His resur- 
rection, and immediately His Kingship is 
disputed, and His unique leadership denied, 
and His binding authority abrogated. He 
would long since have been superseded 
had men not known He was God's Holy 
One, accredited as such by His triumph over 
death. Upon this faith in Him does our 
spiritual trust ever rest. Him whom God 
so signally honored we can not but accept 
as the world's Savior. Our faith does 
indeed depend for all its virility upon the 
certain fact of His survival of death. We 
have absolute confidence in Him, not merely 
because of the matchless words He spoke 
107 



THE RESURRECTION 

and the holy life He lived, and the deeds 
He performed, but because of the supreme 
recognition God made of Him as the Mes- 
siah by empowering Him to escape from 
the final control of death. By this act did 
God Himself set His majestic approval 
upon Him. 

In another respect also is our faith 
declared vain by the denial of the resur- 
rection of Christ. The reasonableness of 
the belief in the possible perfection of human 
nature depends upon this conviction. Surely 
this is one of the supreme glories of the 
human spirit, that it feels the ignominy 
of sin and pollution and in its highest mo- 
ments longs to free itself from all iniquity 
and to develop into all beauty of holiness. 
It is not satisfied with itself until it unfolds 
its latent spiritual capacities and permits 
these to come to their perfect flower and 
fruit. It feels within itself the propulsions 
toward real spiritual oneness with God. 

To just this sublime hope did the faith 

in the resurrection minister. The struggle 

for holiness was not to be a hopeless one. 

The sinful nature, breaking out into its 

108 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

manifold and hideous forms, was not to 
be ever in the ascendency. The passion for 
perfection was to be satisfied. Death could 
not prevent the spirit from advancing into 
its coveted likeness with God. What was 
begun here would be carried on in another 
existence. And in that other life man's 
spirit would be ever growing not only in 
its power to understand God, but also 
in its power of spiritual response to Him. 
Man needs eternity in which to grow. 
So exalted is the stature of Christ, that the 
unfolding ages will be necessary to bring 
man into conformity with Him. Limit 
our existence to this life, and the highest 
and most wonderful of all achievements 
is made impossible. Our God is not con- 
tent with man's imperfectness and partial- 
ness. He must be interested in bringing 
him to his full perfection. But for this, 
one little earthly life is not enough. Herder 
voiced the instincts of the race when he 
cried on his deathbed, "More time, more 
time!" God's supreme concern must be to 
help men to a symmetrical, holy character. 
God is not more interested in the perfect 
109 



THE RESURRECTION 

swing of the stars, or in the rythmic flow 
of the tides, than in the perfecting of man's 
personality. No such acccusation can be 
brought against Him. God's ideal for man 
must be our full-rounded completion. And 
whatever is necessary to this He will be- 
stow. He will open to man the holy 
privileges of the endless life, that forever 
he may sit under the tutelage of the Great 
Teacher Himself. Such a faith as this 
is worth while. On such a hope can the 
soul grow. Only when such a message is 
declared is the soul saved from suffocation. 
Only when such a royal possibility is held 
out to man can his character attain to its 
sublimest proportions. 

The soul needs time. The majestic 
lessons are not easily learned. The evil 
tendencies are not quickly subjugated. 
The holy motives are not readily put into 
the regal place of supremacy. The spirit 
is not speedily subdued into complete 
obedience to God. This life is too short 
to learn all the sacred lessons of God, and 
to master the mysteries of grace. To learn 
all the songs that the Spirit would teach us, 
110 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

eternity is necessary. This the saints have 
felt the most keenly, and with holy eagerness 
have they awaited the dawn of that new 
day when they shall be enabled, without 
earthly hindrances, to bring self into con- 
formity to the will of God. For what a 
pitiful thing it would be, indeed, to be a 
human being, if this life — marred, broken, 
soiled, incomplete — were the fullest ex- 
pression of man's powers. But because 
we have the infinite life shall we be changed 
into His likeness. And Christ's life shall 
be supreme motive to the higheit spirit- 
uality. 

And precisely to this conclusion does 
the logic of Paul lead us. "If Christ is 
not raised, then are ye yet in your sins," 
declared the apostle. This is but another 
way of saying, whatever else the passage 
may mean theologically, that without the 
hope of immortality mankind as a whole 
never rises to the highest spiritual life. 
The one hope that, beyond all others com- 
bined — motives man for holiness, impels 
him through discouragements, restrains him 
from guilt, inspires him in the face of 
111 



THE RESURRECTION 

gravest hardship, encourages him despite 
frequent falls — is the conviction of an after- 
life. Remove the hope of that life and 
inevitably this one loses its sanctity. Rob 
him of the assurance of that approaching 
life with its manifold spiritual joys, and 
immediately this life begins to lose its 
glory and to be despoiled of its sanctity. 
Without the thought of that other existence 
magnetizing us here, this life becomes 
chaotic, being destitute of purpose and goal. 
There will never be sufficient motive for 
persistent struggle after holiness, unswerv- 
ing loyalty to the highest, heroic antagonism 
to evil, unless mankind believes that the 
consequence of all these reach beyond the 
few fleeting years of this life. History 
verifies this statement. Wherever the be- 
lief in a future life is the dimmest, there 
life has been meanest and most earthly 
and most beastly. Wherever the hope of 
immortality is clearest, there men have 
lived in greatest goodness and purity and 
self-restraint and unselfishness. Man must 
see himself in the light of eternity properly 
to know how to spend his earthly life. 
112 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

Huxley protests against such a con- 
clusion, and asserts that irrespective of the 
future life would he and every other 
honorable man go on living nobly here 
for the sake of goodness itself, since virtue 
is its own reward. But Huxley misses 
the point utterly. The significance of any 
belief is to be seen, not in its influence upon 
a few scattered individuals, but upon so- 
ciety in general. Entirely unfair is it to 
point to some disbelievers in the resurrec- 
tion, and to assert that they have risen to 
a nobility of character without the hope of 
a future life to motive them. The only fair 
test is to ask as to what is the general in- 
fluence upon large bodies of mankind, in 
all of their manifold interrelations, when a 
denial is made of a life-to-come. And con- 
cerning this there is no uncertainty. Men 
live most like beasts when they imagine 
that they are to die like the beasts. Men 
live most like God when they are persuaded 
that they are the children of God, destined 
to live with Him forever and forever. 
This faith begets holiness of life here. As 
John says, "He that hath this hope purifieth 
8 113 



THE RESURRECTION 

himself even as He is pure." The hope is 
the mighty dynamic to character. 

Herein does Paul display his profound 
insight into human nature. He recognizes 
that the highest righteousness is possible 
only where the holiest interpretation is 
put upon man's nature in all of its wonder- 
ful capacities. If life is limited to these 
few years; if there is no assurance that 
God will give permanence to goodness 
achieved through strenuous struggle; if 
there is no conviction that God is opposed 
to sin and plans its overthrow; if man has 
the conviction that the long-lived tree 
seems to have more value in the sight of 
the sustaining God than man himself, 
whose years are so few, — what is there to 
prevent men from yielding to every physical 
inclination that offers any satisfaction; 
from giving free rein to every sensual 
tendency that presents any gratification; 
from becoming utterly indifferent to the 
privileges and rights of others, if by so 
doing he may seem to add even in the 
smallest degree to his own selfish pleasures 
and satisfactions? 

114 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

If there is no after-life, why should not 
the worldling let his physical tendencies, 
his worldly ambitions, rule him? Why 
should any one refuse to grant him the right 
to decide what kind of life is the most satis- 
fying for him? Why should he be expected 
to be influenced by the standards of the 
person who claims that the higher satis- 
factions come from following the higher 
motives? Why should he be expected to 
sacrifice his own joys, and to limit his own 
self-gratification, and to struggle for the 
good of others? He may well argue that 
in a life so brief every man must decide 
for himself what will conduce to his greatest 
happiness, and that his conclusion as to 
proprieties are as good as those of anybody 
else. 

How any great leverage can be applied 
to man to lift him out of his transgression 
and selfishness without appeal to the im- 
mortal life is impossible to see! Why 
should not every man live in unrestrained 
license, disregarding even the life of others, 
if by so doing he can add even one smallest 
whit of gratification or pleasure to his 
115 



THE RESURRECTION 

own selfish existence? Why should he 
be solicitous about the prosperity of others, 
if by trampling upon their rights he can 
enhance self? If there is a difference of 
opinion as to the reasonableness and right- 
eousness of following unrestrained the 
whims of his fancy, what conclusive argu- 
ment can his objectors present, unless they 
point out the eternal consequences of evil 
and the everlasting results of goodness? 
What rebuke can be given to carnality? 
What legitimate protest is made against sin 
in all of its hideous forms, unless we know 
that every physical transgression is a vio- 
lence against one's immortal spirit; that 
every yielding to selfishness is a cruel wrong 
against another immortal being? Value 
is given to every deed of this life, profound 
significance to the rights of others, only 
when we recognize that what we do and 
are, mightily influences beings to whom 
a future life is to come. 

Highest respect for this life comes only 

as we recognize its intimate relations to 

an endless life. Persistent, zealous, heroic 

struggle for all holiness of character, in 

116 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

individuals and in society, can be the re- 
sult only of the tremendous conviction that 
we are the children of the Eternal One, 
and that what we do and are has eternal 
value in His sight. We will be ready to 
sacrifice and toil for others as we recognize 
that God has vast purposes for each of 
them; and that, as we sacrifice for them, 
we become in their behalf co-workers with 
God. 

What saves us from the worldling's 
creed and the worldling's deed is the faith 
in the future life. We are delivered from 
the sin that defiles, and the hard-heartedness 
that deforms, and the selfishness that kills, 
as we see in each other beings that are to 
partake through God's gift of His endless- 
ness. And we have but to ask ourselves 
where the highest saintliness is found, 
where the largest spirit of loyalty to the 
common good exists, where the sublimest 
self-abnegations are made for the uplift 
of the many, to discover anew that Paul 
was right when he said, "If the dead rise 
not, ye are yet in your sins." 



117 



CHAPTER VI 

THE DENIAL AS IMPEACHING THE 

WITNESSES 



The testimony of the witnesses to the resur- 
rection is conclusive, unless we suspect that they 
were either incapacitated to weigh evidence fairly, 
or were led, willfully, to stifle the truth and publish 
a falsehood. Very few persons have ever been 
inclined to make this charge that the apostles were 
either wild enthusiasts of fancy, or crafty calcu- 
lators of fraud; and no one has ever been able to 
support the position even with moderate plausi- 
bility. — Alger. 

This chapter rings with truth: every word is, 
as it were, alive with it; and before you can believe 
that there is no resurrection, you must believe that 
this glorious chapter, with all its earnestness of 
argument, and all its richness of metaphor and 
force of illustration, was written by one who was 
speaking what was false, and who, moreover, 
knew at his heart that he was speaking what was 
false. — Robertson. 

Paul admits no excuse on the grounds of the 
apostles being mistaken, deceived by false per- 
ceptions or excited imaginations. It is an issue 
of personal veracity. — Whedon. 



CHAPTER VI 

The Denial as Impeaching the 

Witnesses 

Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; 
because we have testified of God that He raised 
up Christ: whom He raised not up, if so be that the 
dead rise not. — Verse 15. 

That the resurrection of Christ may not 
be doubted, does Paul point out another 
absurd consequence that must be seen to 
follow upon the denial. All those who so 
persistently have declared Christ's resur- 
rection as an incontrovertible fact, are 
therefore convicted of base falsehood. They 
have deliberately falsified. They have her- 
alded to a credulous world, easily misled 
because of its sorrows and needs, a message 
that was but a rotten deception. They 
were heralds of a lie. To those who be- 
lieved them, they announced as reality that 
121 



THE RESURRECTION 

which never had occurred. They had pur- 
posely misled their eager hearers into be- 
lieving what was but a miserable falsehood. 
For some gloomy, ulterior motives they 
had been misrepresenting the actual con- 
ditions, thereby holding out false hopes 
to their congregations, and iniquitously 
ascribing to God what He had never per- 
formed. 

But Paul will not permit either himself 
or the other witnesses to escape from the 
pitiful implications of such a charge. If 
it is true, then their lives have been a 
sham. Then they can make no claim to 
honesty and uprightness and truthfulness. 
They must stand condemned forever in the 
sight of the world whom purposely they 
have deceived. 

Paul recognizes that unless their message 
is true, their reputation is forever gone, and 
that upon them there must come the ig- 
nominy and shame that is due such as, 
knowingly, have deceived those who, in 
their ignorance, implicitly trusted them. 
But what a crushing burden is this for 
any heart to bear! To know that when 
122 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

multitudes listened in anxious eagerness, 
hoping to receive as a revelation from God 
some holy message that would quiet their 
questioning spirit and give it some sacred 
outlook, that then, in that sacred hour, the 
sublime, freeing, ennobling truth was not 
spoken with a heavenly authority — but a 
lie, black and hideous, was uttered — and 
men were told to build upon it and trust 
in it and conform their lives to it! Such a 
thought must have made the holy heart 
of Paul shudder with pain. He turns 
agonizingly from the black supposition. 
He insists upon having his critics appre- 
ciate what would be involved were the 
hideous charge proven to be true. He will 
compel them to see just what it would mean 
to himself and his fellow-workers could it 
ever be proven that their statements were 
deliberate falsification. 

Paul, as a Christian preacher and a 
member of the Church of Christ, is passion- 
ately concerned now with his reputation. 
How do he and his friends stand in the 
sight of their fellow-men? What estimate 
do they place upon him concerning those 
123 



THE RESURRECTION 

basic qualities of genuineness that con- 
stitute even in Corinth the glory of a true 
man? To Paul it seems incredible that 
sensible men should do violence to that 
most fundamental of all things — their repu- 
tation in the sight of men and their standing 
with God. To keep the name unsullied; 
to retain the respect and confidence of 
men; to live so honorably among them as 
to win only their approval, and to escape 
ever their suspicions; — this is surely one of 
the basic instincts of the heart. To fall 
under the condemnation of one's fellow- 
beings; to be under their angry disapproval; 
to feel the rude shock of their judgments; — 
from such an experience every rational 
being must inevitably seek to escape. 
Unspeakably precious is a man's repu- 
tation. To guard that he will fight to the 
bitter death. No greater tragedy could 
well happen to a reasonable, sensitive man, 
than that his good name be attacked; or 
he be held up to public scorn; or he be de- 
prived of the respect of those who associate 
with him. It is this that blanches men's 
cheeks; drives them for escape into desolate 
124 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

parts of the earth; enfeebles their strength; 
unbalances the mind; impels them at last 
into reckless deeds of self-destruction. Their 
reputation is gone, and life has lost its sun- 
light. 

But upon no person does the ill-will of 
society turn more savagely than upon the 
liar whose perverted message has led his 
confiding fellows into pitiful error. For 
him who deceives and misleads and mis- 
represents, society has only its fiercest 
condemnation. All of this the sensitive 
Paul understood. He tries to make his 
critics understand how incredible that he 
and his fellow Christians should be im- 
agined as tampering with the truth; or 
in so tremendous a matter as Christ's 
death and resurrection that they should 
be deliberately misleading their hearers. 
Preposterous to think that these men did 
not have higher standards of righteousness 
animating them! Absurd to think that 
they did not more highly value their own 
reputations among men. Even the lowest 
estimate of the moral quality of these 
heralds of the resurrection prevents us 
125 



THE RESURRECTION 

from harboring against them the slightest 
suspicion of insincerity or duplicity. They 
were too sensible not to know that a lie 
concerning a matter as significant as the 
resurrection must surely be discovered; 
and that upon detection they must inevi- 
tably be branded by the ill-will of those 
whom they had injured. Nothing is more 
certain than that some day every lie will 
be exposed to the light of day, and that 
those who have been deceived will turn 
to rend those who misled them. Only the 
insane man heralds a lie, and imagines it 
can live undetected. If actuated by no 
pure religious motive, Paul and his co- 
workers must have been restrained by this 
thought. 

How painful, therefore, to Paul and 
his Christian friends the insinuation that 
they could be falsifiers. The slander cut 
him to the quick. From that holy day on 
the road to Damascus when he had been 
apprehended of Christ, until the present, 
Paul had been humbly endeavoring to 
lead the exemplary Christian life. To do 
Christ's will, that had become his pas- 
126 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

sion. To have every beautiful virtue strong 
in his character, that had been his ceaseless 
aspiration. He coveted the best gifts. 
To free himself from every trace of the old 
life, that had been his unvarying prayer. 
Long before he ever even penned the words 
in his epistle had he been stalwartly striving 
to "think upon whatsoever things are 
true." Throughout his remarkable minis- 
try he had unwearyingly been attempting 
to persuade men to do nothing contrary to 
the truth. To him a lie must have been a 
black abomination. ."j 

And should he now be spokesman of a 
falsehood? Should his life be an incarnate 
lie? At the same time that he urges his 
hearers to righteousness is it possible that 
he is consciously deceiving them about 
one of the cardinal beliefs in his faith? 
The thought must have been utterly in- 
conceivable to those who were acquainted 
with Paul in his sincerity and nobility and 
straightforwardness and transparent good- 
ness. Surely that man could not lie! In 
him were all the marks of unswerving up- 
rightness. Consequently by the very stur- 
127 



THE RESURRECTION , 

diness of his character and by the religious 
beauty of his fellow Christians did Paul 
refute the absurd charge of those denying 
the resurrection. He had enough con- 
fidence in himself and in his associates to 
believe that no one could reasonably charge 
them with falsehood. Their sanctity of 
life would prevent them from speaking 
falsely. Therefore, when they declared the 
resurrection, no one could doubt it, unless 
they were willing to call into question the 
sincerity and truthfulness of the witnesses. 
And when Paul defends the veracity of 
himself and his Christian fellow-witnesses, 
he must have had in mind not merely the 
judgment of men, but also the judgment 
of God. He could never forget that he had 
his existence always as in the sight of God. 
The thought of his reputation among men 
must have been a small thing in comparison 
with his thought of the evaluation that 
God would put upon him. To Him he, 
as a preacher and Christian, must give ac- 
count for every word uttered, for every 
statement made, for every proclamation 
heralded as truth. By Him he must be 
128 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

judged concerning the entire influence that 
had emanated from his life. He could not 
escape the conviction that for a falsehood 
he would have to answer the God that 
loved truth and hated a lie. This he could 
not remember without trembling. From 
the condemnation of God who knew the 
secret heart of man, there would be no 
escape. If he falsified he was tragically 
guilty before God. If, contrary to actu- 
ality, he had been declaring the resurrec- 
tion of Christ, then he had been impiously 
misrepresenting God, and attributing to 
Him something which He had not done. 
God must therefore condemn him. 

And surely no more serious charge could 
be brought against any human being than 
that, for his own advantage or satisfaction 
in any form, he had deliberately deceived 
men into believing something about God's 
plans and dealings with men that was not 
true. Spiritual degeneration could go no 
further. No guilt before God could be 
more heinous than for a supposed mes- 
senger of the truth, purporting to deal with 
those divine revelations that were to minis- 
9 129 



THE RESURRECTION 

ter to the welfare of humankind; to mislead 
his credulous audiences and to arouse false 
expectations and to awaken erroneous hopes 
concerning God. Full well did Paul know 
that had he done this no judgment of God 
could be heavy enough upon him. 

To lie to men, that was an inconceivable 
thing to the holy Paul. But to lie to men 
about God, that was a thing so incon- 
ceivable that it was a preposterous ab- 
surdity. That would be the very climax 
of iniquity. Had Paul been willing to do 
this, then his soul had been dead. Then 
utter night had been ruling within his 
being. Then he must have been in foulest 
of depravity. Had his fellow Christians 
consented deliberately and persistently to 
practice the hideous deception upon the 
unsuspecting Corinthians, then they are 
more hopelessly sin-bound than the most 
polluted profligate of the wicked city. 

And as we see the hideous implications 
are we compelled to acknowledge that the 
testimony of these many witnesses con- 
cerning the resurrection is not a falsifica- 
tion — manufactured to give rapid spread 
130 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

to their new religion. Acquaintance with 
Paul and Peter and John and James and the 
many humbler but equally stalwart Chris- 
tians must have tremendously strength- 
ened the conviction that such person could 
not lie. Their entire lives refuted the 
charge. There was a beauty and win- 
someness and glory of character about 
them that elevated them forever above the 
suspicion of fraud. 

What reason could they have had for 
fabricating the story? What sufficient mo- 
tive could be attributed to them for falsely 
declaring Christ's resurrection, when such 
a deceitful message must inevitably con- 
demn them not merely in the sight of men, 
but also of the just God? They do not act 
like deceitful men. There is an impressive 
consistency about their quiet, unassuming, 
attractive, earnest lives that makes it im- 
possible to entertain, for an instant, the 
suspicion that they were secretly, con- 
sciously making themselves the messengers 
of a falsehood. There is the "ring of truth- 
fulness" about every word they utter. To 
be able to speak with such undisputed au- 
131 



THE RESURRECTION 

thority, with such convincing strength, with 
such apparent honesty, with such tireless 
zeal, with such self-sacrificing earnestness, 
with such unswerving heroism — this could 
be psychologically possible only as these 
first witnesses to the Lord's resurrection 
were declaring some mighty truths of God 
which they knew to be incontrovertible 
fact. If the denial of Christ's survival 
after death means the impeachment of 
that body of Christians that constitute 
God's first Church upon earth, then but 
one course is open to us. We are com- 
pelled to acknowledge the validity of their 
teachings, for we can not force ourselves 
to believe that they are anything but 
spiritual heroes, incapable of a lie, tre- 
mendously in earnest in the annunciation 
of this supreme revelation, because of its 
tremendous significance to all mankind. 



132 



CHAPTER VII 

THE DENIAL AND THE DEPARTED 
CHRISTIANS 



Alas for him who never sees 
The stars shine through his cypress trees ! 
Who, hopeless, lays his dead away, 
Nor looks to see the breaking day 
Across the mournful marbles play! 
Who hath not learned, in hours of faith, 

The truth to flesh and sense unknown, 
That Life is ever lord of Death, 

And Love can never lose its own ! 

— Whittier. 

And with the morn those angel faces smile, 
Which I have loved long since and lost awhile. 

— Newman. 
Be stilled an hour, and stir from sleep — 
Reborn, rerisen, — and yet the same. 

— Tennyson. 

Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep — 
He hath awakened from the dream of life — 

'T is we who, lost in stormy visions, keep 
With phantoms an unprofitable strife. 

^—Shelley. 

They are not dead! they have but passed 
Beyond the mists that blind us here 

Into the new and larger life 

Of that serener sphere. — McCreery. 

For love is stronger than death. 



CHAPTER VII 

The Denial and the Departed 
Christians 

Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ 
are perished. — Verse 18. 

Into what gloomy beliefs infidelity plunges 
itself, Paul points out, in the next place, 
when he raises the question as to what has 
become, if Christ is not risen, of those 
cherished and honored ones of the Christian 
circles whose earthly lives had come to an 
end. No query as to the value of man in 
the sight of God could have brought home 
more personally and powerfully the entire 
matter of the validity of the resurrection 
than just this. What had become of them 
when death touched them? Were they ut- 
terly annihilated when;this life ceased, or did 
they go into another existence? With the 
failure of the body that succumbed to death 
135 



THE RESURRECTION 

did their entire being go out, as bubbles that 
burst in the dark? Or in the loving provi- 
dence of God did they pass by the portal 
of death into a new existence in which they 
were in the beneficent care of God, even in 
a higher sense than in the earthly existence? 
Nor is Paul's inquiry superfluous. It 
relates itself to the profoundest questions 
that ever assail the inward peace of man- 
kind. As long as man's spirit is capable 
of love — as long as the holy fire of a change- 
less affection burns upon the altar of his 
heart, must he meditate in gravest solem- 
nity upon the fate of the departed. He 
can not be indifferent to their lot. Having 
enjoyed the privilege of human associa- 
tions with friends and family kin, he must 
ponder with anxious earnestness upon their 
condition when the sacred fellowships have 
been broken and the beloved intimacies 
of the home circle are shattered. Had 
Paul been less of a friend, less a lover of 
his own, less an admirer of nobility wherever 
he saw it in any life, he would not have 
asked the question. He would have been 
like those modern pagans who, seeing no 
136 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

holiness in love, despise its hungers and 
disregard its instincts. But the great apos- 
tle knew that the one passion that links 
us most closely to God and makes us 
most like Him, was love. He could not 
be callous to the anxious longings of the 
loving heart when, in its darkness, it went 
on its quest for light concerning the lot of 
those passed out of this life. 

And here Paul voices the universal in- 
stinct. Love must have an answer. Af- 
fection must get some knowledge. It will 
toil and struggle until it knows what 
has befallen the departed ones. And if 
the answer is not what love expects, then 
the sunlight goes out of life, the winter 
chill brings its icy desolations, the flowers 
of gladness cease to bloom, the birds fail 
to sing. Utter ruin comes to the smitten 
heart from which its companion has been 
taken, if it knows that there is no Beyond. 
Then all is gloomy • chaos, and even the 
present life loses its worth and its meaning 
and its peace. 

If Christ did not rise from the dead, 
then Paul sees but one lot open to all the 
137 



THE RESURRECTION 

dead. They have perished! As the fragrant 
flower before the devouring fire, so have 
they been annihilated forever. As the 
beauteous, fleecy cloud before the hot 
wind, so have they vanished. They are 
no more! Love has nothing to expect. 
Affection must now eat its bitterness. 
The circles are ruthlessly broken, never 
to be united again. The intimacies have 
been shattered never to be cemented again. 
The death that smote the departed, leaves 
not one smallest ray of hope in the heart 
of the bereaved. Not one star shines. 
The cruel hand that crushed the loved, 
earthly form will scatter its sacred dust 
to the four winds, unmindful of the agony 
of those weeping ones that still survive. 
They have all disappeared, never to return 
again, bringing with them on their reap- 
pearance joy as of the dawning morning. 
They have vanished, to be swallowed up 
forever by the tyrant, Nothingness. What- 
ever the beauty of character, whatever the 
abundance of virtues, whatever the saint- 
liness of spirit, whatever the unselfishness 
of personality that displayed itself in a 
138 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

thousand acts of kindness, — all is forever 
destroyed! God saw no value to the holy 
character, and was impotent to preserve 
it when death made its overpowering at- 
tack. He allowed them to perish, and 
He did not care what might be the hide- 
ous consequences to sorrow-crushed human 
hearts. 

But against such a momentous con- 
clusion Paul's intelligence and love rise 
in mighty revolt. And in refuting this 
base slander against God, Paul speaks his 
truest, sweetest, human word. 

When Paul meditated upon death there 
must have come into his memory the hal- 
lowed faces of the many loved ones of his 
Christian congregations everywhere, who, 
during the years of his ministry, had one 
by one fallen out of the ranks. His shep- 
herd-love must have made him think with 
great frequency of their saintly constancy 
of purpose and their glory of life. It must 
have caused him to ponder with tender 
seriousness as to what he could believe 
concerning them, and what message he 
had authority to declare relative to them. 
139 



THE RESURRECTION 

When death conquered them, was that the 
closing episode of their holy careers? Did 
the God who had miraculously brought 
them into being through birth, and who 
by His daily providences had helped them 
into beauty of character, did He have no 
higher purpose for them than that which 
related to this life? Was there nothing 
of sufficient significance to their ennobled 
personalities, so that He who had given life 
here might perpetuate them into another 
existence? For the despairing ones left 
behind to mourn in their affliction, was 
there to be no time in God's wisdom when 
the wounded hearts might be comforted 
into new joy by the vision of those lost 
ones for whom love had never ceased to 
burn? Was there never to be a place where 
God would gather His own together again 
and where those stalwart souls that had 
joyfully done His will here might live in 
a more intimate fellowship with Him and 
be numbered in the multitude of those upon 
whom He could look in loving approval? 
And when the clamorous questions be- 
sieged him, Paul had but one answer. 
140 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

He never swerved from the mighty convic- 
tion that gripped his being. Because Christ 
arose, these should arise. Because Christ 
had mastered the tomb, those also should 
share the same bliss who loved Him, and 
who faithfully tried to serve Him. They 
should participate also in His triumph. 
Because Christ entered upon a new life, 
they must also partake of its sacred privi- 
leges. Because He ascended to His Father, 
they, too, should stand in some new glory 
in the presence of God. Those asleep in 
Christ would awake in His likeness, and 
be forever with Him! 

With a sublime assurance Paul reasons 
from the worthfulness of these loved ones 
who have finished their earthly life, to an 
immortal life. He further strengthens his 
faith in the resurrection life with Christ be- 
cause he can not be persuaded that those 
glorified souls, so triumphantly leading a 
spiritual existence during their earthly 
course, have been put out of existence for- 
ever by death. A monstrosity seems to 
him the creed that interprets God, the 
Father, as a Being cruel enough so to treat 
141 



THE RESURRECTION 

such children! He revolts at the thought. 
For when Paul endeavors to evaluate these 
elect ones of the many churches, his ad- 
miration reached sublime bounds. He knew 
what persons they had been, kings and 
queens of the spirit. They had added a 
glory to humankind. They were its purest 
spirits. They were humanity's holiest rep- 
resentatives. All that was loveliest and 
purest and noblest and loftiest in character 
had found transcendent place in their 
transfigured personalities. Their natures 
had been subdued into conformity to Christ. 
Toward Him, as run mighty rivers to the 
ocean, had gone the wealth of their love. 
For His cause they had been willing to 
sacrifice all worldly enjoyments and hon- 
ors. With a consummate loyalty that 
knew no vacillation had they remained 
faithful to His commands. Through the 
years of misunderstanding and poverty and 
hardships and persecution they had never 
lost their passion for Him, nor failed to 
uphold His cause. Ever had they striven 
through Christ to do that which was well- 
pleasing in the sight of God. And ere they 
142 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

had "fallen asleep " they had grown into 
the stature of spiritual giants. In the sight 
of men, by their victory over sin and their 
mastery over self and their service for God, 
they were character-monarchs. 

But when they come to die, how will 
God treat them? Paul was forced to ask 
himself the question. Was there nothing 
in their personalities that He could respect 
sufficiently to perpetuate them? Was there 
not enough of spiritual sovereignty about 
them so that God could make them sur- 
vive their physical destruction? Could not 
He whom they had tried to serve with such 
honorable faithfulness make them triumph, 
even when death seemed victor? Did spir- 
itual things as incarnated in them have no 
meaning to Him? Did their self-denial 
and faithfulness and heroism count for 
nothing in His sight? Did they give them- 
selves in vain to the stupendous task of 
fashioning the inner man into conformity 
with Christ? Were all their prayers and 
hopes and aspirations empty of result? 
Would God have no more regard for them 
than did the hard-hearted, sinning, un- 
143 



THE RESURRECTION 

spiritual multitudes that despised and de- 
rided and persecuted Him? If there is an 
omnipotent, moral God, is it incredible to 
suppose that in such lives He would not 
take a holy interest and by His all-power 
rescue them from the mastery of death? 
Paul leads us irresistibly to this sig- 
nificant conclusion. Because God is a 
Moral Being, He can never be indifferent 
to moral grandeur among men. As spirit- 
ual Father, He must take His holiest delight 
in those who, despite the allurements to sin- 
fulness, find their complete joy in serving 
Him. If humanity can not trust in Him, 
then the universe is rotten to the core. 
Then we must acknowledge that God 
sneers at holiness and mocks, like an un- 
holy tyrant, at saintliness among men. If 
God is righteous, He must honor right- 
eousness. If God has the slightest at- 
tribute of holiness, He must respect with 
an unfailing insistence the holiness that 
out of the midst of human conditions blos- 
soms in men's spirits. If Paul respected 
and loved these departed saints, could God 
do less? If Paul's affection for them made 
144 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

him long for their preservation, would not 
the Almighty Father also have some vast 
plan for their continuance? If Paul wished 
an immortality for them, could God do any 
differently? If Paul's love toward them, 
though they were dead, knew no alteration, 
did God's love toward them grow cold 
when after their holy lives they were com- 
pelled, by the inexorable laws of earth, to 
go to their graves? Could God be less 
solicitous about His own than Paul was? 
Such a charge carries with it its own refu- 
tation. Paul knew that he could trust 
his God to do "exceeding abundantly 
above all that we ask or think." The 
human love that holds tenaciously to its 
precious ones is but a faint reflection of the 
divine love that knows no obstacles and 
will never forsake its own. 

Nor has Paul's logic lost its blessed 
significance for us to-day. With throbbing 
heart and tear-filled eyes do we ask what 
is the lot of our loved ones passed beyond 
our sight. In Christ did they fall asleep. 
They trusted Him as their Savior from 
sin and from death. To them He was the 
10 145 



THE RESURRECTION 

One altogether lovely, the fairest among 
ten thousand, the highest among the hosts 
of heaven. To do His will, this was their 
changeless desire. To overcome their weak- 
nesses and grow into His likeness, this was 
their daily prayer. To do heroically, de- 
spite all opposition, His service, this their 
unfailing ambition. He was their all in 
all. Their creed was, "To me to live is 
Christ." In the midst of the world's al- 
lurements and blandishments and sins they 
lived with such unfailing effort at con- 
sistency that there was about them some- 
thing of a saint's spiritual grandeur. The 
world sensed that "they had been with 
Jesus," and that they "walked with God." 
But when their eyes closed in death, 
what became of them? Infidelity's gloomy 
answer is': "They were annihilated. They 
have returned to the nothingness from 
which they sprang. Being but physical 
aggregates they were crushed into ex- 
tinction by the ponderous wheels of ruth- 
less nature. Their candle has gone out 
forever. Their identity is hopelessly lost 
as their natural atoms go back to earth 
146 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

again. Death has claimed its own, and 
from it there is no escape." 

But something within man protests 
at the base reply. Man's spirit scoffs at 
infidelity. Believing in God as a Moral 
Being, it sublimely concludes that He must 
have supreme regard for holiness in man, 
and will strive to preserve it and will bring 
it to the highest expression. It believes 
that the race is put here to be disciplined, 
trained, prepared for a higher existence. 
It holds that when any human being learns 
God's lessons and loves His will and dedi- 
cates the life to Him, death can never 
separate from Him; the life still has infinite 
worth to God, and He will continue lov- 
ingly to brood over it. Death is but the 
mysterious portal whose door swings God- 
ward. In nothing in all the vast universe 
is God so much interested as sanctified 
personality. Toward nothing will He per- 
mit His omnipotence to flow with such 
inconceivable wealth as toward His true 
spiritual children. These must have some 
special place in His vast plans. He can 
not be conceived as indifferent to those 
147 



THE RESURRECTION 

exalted souls who, having crucified the 
flesh and purified the heart and dedicated 
the powers to Him, have helped to redeem 
mankind and to make God King upon 
earth. For these there must be something 
beyond death. For these the grave can 
not be the goal. For these there must be 
new lessons, larger consecrations, loftier 
tasks, weightier achievements, sweeter com- 
munions, holier aspirations, never-ceasing 
developments. By all that heart and mind 
can teach us must we believe that God has 
some greater life to bestow upon them. 
They must surely rise with Christ. 

It is possible to conceive how God must 
deal with some intractible, stiffnecked souls 
who repel His advances and rise in rebellion 
against His will and do open violence to 
His cause and forestall His plans and hinder 
the growth of His Kingdom and despise 
all spiritual communion, and sneer at the 
supremacy of Christ's life and place them- 
selves in open anarchy against Him, who 
make themselves a curse among God's 
children. To those who choose the gloom 
there must be only night. But there are 
148 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

the fair-faced children of the light also. 
These the race can not forget. They have 
been its pride, its glory, its inspiration. 
They have taught us how divine a thing 
a human life could become. They have 
bidden us see how high, by the help of God, 
the spirit of man can mount. They have 
demonstrated how superbly the evil tend- 
encies could be mastered, and how regally 
the human will may be surrendered to the 
will of God. They have revealed how 
joyous a thing it is for man to be co-worker 
with God. By all the glorified powers and 
beauties of the transfigured character they 
have given us some hint of how much like 
God man may become, and how much of 
God may be made to find its expression in 
a human soul. By their holiness they re- 
buked sin. By their spiritual responsive- 
ness they made men aware of the nearness 
of God. By their zeal they put to shame 
all self-seeking, all indifference, all low con- 
tentment. To honor them mankind has 
built its monuments and made imperishable 
their names. Beholding them the world 
has believed that immortality is possible 
149 



THE RESURRECTION 

and necessary; for God could not let such 
personalities perish. Reason demands their 
life everlasting! 

And if reason utters its protest against 
the annihilation of the saintly, so does love. 
Love seems never so wonderful, as in the 
presence of death. Why should it not cease 
to burn when death has touched our own? 
Why did God not blow out the flame when 
He permits the dear ones to say farewell? 
Why is it that affection's fire glows brightest 
sometimes years after the separation from 
our own? Tears and lonesomeness and 
longing, — these are the mysterious language 
by which the smitten soul speaks out its 
affection that death can not kill, and de- 
clares its changeless allegiance to the beings 
now moved out into the mysterious Beyond. 
Love can never let them go. Love believes 
that God will, in some divine way, let the 
heart be satisfied again with a vision of the 
departed and an endless life with them in 
His presence. 

For unless love has its holy rights 
which God must willingly regard, then all 
its promptings are bitterest mockery. Why 
150 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

should God give us the power of loving 
unless He will give us eternal satisfaction? 
Why does He teach us the holy art, unless 
we are never to lose the objects of our af- 
fection? Why, because of love, should 
the bereaved heart feel lonesomeness, unless 
God is trying to train it for some higher 
companionship? Why should God make 
the heart capable of grief unless He were 
endeavoring to train us for eternal com- 
forts? Why should God let hot tears 
drench the cheeks unless He were trying 
to purify the heart and make it ready for 
heavenly companionship? He does not 
teach us how to love that He may torment 
us. We know how to love, because He 
changelessly and sublimely loves. We can 
love beyond the grave because God's love 
stretches beyond the grave. We unfalter- 
ingly hope for ecstatic, heavenly reunions 
because God has put the mysterious in- 
stinct within us. Every tear and heart- 
throb and ache and longing is a holy 
prophecy. He does not keep forever burn- 
ing upon our hearts love's altar-fires that 
He may tantalize us. He does not permit 
151 



THE RESURRECTION 

memory to recall the faces of the departed 
that He may trouble us in the long night- 
watches. He does not make the wounds 
pulsate with pain again that we may feel 
new agonies. Love is the divine prophet! 
Through it we see what is inevitably to be. 
Love is the herald foretelling the dawn. 
Love is God's messenger, bidding the heart 
continue its hoping and trusting and long- 
ing. Some day we are to greet again in 
God's home those that have fallen asleep 
in Christ. They have not perished. They 
still live in the sunshine of His cloudless 
love. Our love is the golden cord by which 
God binds us to them, and through which 
He fits us for glorified companionship with 
them and with Him. We need not fear 
death, then, as long as we love. One ray 
of its holy light pierces through all the 
gloom of doubts and denials. One song, 
chanted by love, silences all of infidelity's 
dirges ! 

The holy dead are safe in God's keeping. 

They who are precious in our sight, are 

unspeakably precious in God's sight also. 

They stand glorified in the presence of the 

152 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

Lord whom they tried to serve. They are 
still under the guardianship of the risen 
Christ whom they adored. The Master's 
prayer has been answered, and they are 
forever where He is. They behold Him 
face to face! They are being changed into 
His likeness, from glory into glory. They 
are forever at home with God in the house 
of many mansions. 



153 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE DENIAL AND THE LIVING 
BELIEVERS 



As the lark sings sweetly when she soars on 
high — but is suddenly silenced when she falls to 
the earth — so the soul lives well when, by con- 
templation, it rises to God and heaven; but it lives 
poorly, or rather not at all, spiritually, when it 
lives out of sight of heaven. — Baxter. 

Live while you live, the epicure would say, 
And seize the pleasures of the passing day ! 
Live while you live, the sacred preacher cries, 
And give to God each moment as it flies ! 
Lord, in my views let both united be; 
I live in pleasure when I live to Thee. 

— Doddridge. 

Serene, I fold my hands and wait, 
Nor care for wind, or tide, or sea; 

I rave no more 'gainst time or fate, 
For lo! my own shall come to me. 

— Burroughs. 



CHAPTER VIII 
The Denial and the Living Believers 

If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we 
are of all men most miserable. — Verse 19. 

To the Grecians of Paul's time the new 
religion of Christianity must have seemed 
a most extraordinary thing. Between cul- 
tured Paganism and this new organization 
believing in Christ as its head there were 
tremendous differences. Under the refined 
externalisms of Greece there was an ap- 
palling rottenness. Nor did there seem 
to be the possibility of any escape from this 
inward decay. As long as Bacchanalian or- 
gies could be sanctioned in the name of 
religion was Greece doomed. No hope 
for morality of a higher kind when sins 
of the basest and most bestial forms were 
protected and fostered by the prevailing 
religious system to which the people were 
157 



THE RESURRECTION 

in bondage. Into this revolting corrup- 
tion came Paul, preaching personal piety, 
escape from sin and pollution, purity from 
all bestiality, self-sacrifice for the good of 
others, inner spiritual conformity to the 
exalted moral character of God. And all 
of this was to be achieved through faith in 
Christ Jesus, who had lived the perfect 
life, had suffered death at the hands of 
sinful men, and had by the direct inter- 
position of God been restored to life and 
exalted into eternal sovereignty. 
I But while the Corinthian could not 
question the exaltedness of the life which 
the Christian system produced when it was 
earnestly obeyed, he never ceased to hurl 
one denial at it. He charged it with a basal 
error. He doubted the resurrection of 
Christ. Instead of being the living rep- 
resentative of the redeeming power of God, 
instead of being the type of what God 
purposed to do for all His faithful children, 
Christ was dead. Their hopes in Him 
were misplaced. Their expectations were 
erroneous. All their confidence in His 
redeeming power was idle. Their trust 
158 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

was a delusion. As a dead Christ, this 
teacher was impotent to deliver them from 
death. In trusting in Him they were 
like children believing in impossible stories. 
They were being deceived by Paul. No- 
body saw more clearly than did Paul 
the killing implications of such a charge. 
He frankly admits that all of Christianity's 
optimism must disappear if Christ be un- 
risen; and that of all men the Christian is 
most to be pitied. And by this Paul does 
not disparage the virtue and goodness to 
be found in the lives of some of the 
noblest of the Grecians. For goodness he 
has only the highest praise, irrespective 
of the soil from which it grows. Every 
particle of nobility Paul would attribute 
to the working of God's spirit upon man. 
But just because he is so intensely in earnest 
concerning the creation in men's lives of 
the highest type of holiness and virtue 
does he lay such strategic importance upon 
the faith of Christ. 

No one could have believed more firmly 
than did Paul that God was working every- 
where upon the hearts of men to lead them 
159 



THE RESURRECTION 

to righteousness, and that every variety 
of goodness came only as man grew re- 
sponsive to divine influences. All beauty 
of character was from Him and had value in 
itself for this life, irrespective of the ques- 
tion of a life to come. Whatever of spirit- 
ual attainment the Grecian could show, 
Paul must have sincerely rejoiced over. 
But with the religious life of persons or 
nations, impelled only by natural motives, 
Paul was never satisfied. He saw that 
higher motives were necessary, and higher 
revelations were required to lift men into 
a true, spiritual glory. Paul hoped for a 
quality of life for the average man that 
vastly transcended anything that could be 
found among the rank and file of the Cor- 
inthians. He trusted then, not merely in 
a present life, ennobled by faith in Christ, 
but also in a future life in which the soul 
of man, under the direct tutelage of Christ, 
would develop into His likeness. He had 
vast spiritual hopes for mankind. He 
looked forward to another existence where 
the soul would no longer be in bondage 
to any sin. The very intensity of his 
160 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

ambition for humanity, the very largeness 
of his expectations concerning the future 
attainments open to men, the fullness of 
the joy that he experienced in recognizing 
the consequences to all mankind, living or 
dead, of a hope in immortality — made him 
feel that his woe would be unspeakable 
if the after-life with all of its glories were 
impossible. In proportion to the intensity 
of his longing for mankind's spiritual re- 
generation would be his grief at its low re- 
ligious attainments and its abundant sin. 
The more he expected from God in His 
dealing with men, and the vaster the in- 
terpretation that he had put upon God's 
nature, the keener must be Paul's humilia- 
tion and chagrin and disappointment were 
it finally discovered that God could not 
or would not do for mankind what Paul 
had so eagerly anticipated, and that the 
Christian message concerning the resur- 
rection of Christ was not true. Having 
expected at the hand of God things so sub- 
lime, what unspeakable woe to learn that 
every sacred longing was destined to be un- 
fulfilled! Having preached to the Grecian 
11 161 



THE RESURRECTION 

world a God of power and love so exalted 
that even death could not stand before 
Him, what unutterable sorrow must fill 
Paul's heart were he to learn that he had 
misunderstood God, and that a belief in 
the resurrection was but a wild fancy! 
Having heralded to the grieving, sorrowing 
multitudes the possibility of reunion again 
with those departed ones fallen asleep in 
Christ, what tragedy of pain to have them 
learn that the message to which they had 
listened with such esctasy of joy was but a 
delusion — an empty hope ! Having preached 
to the eager multitudes the possibility of 
a heavenly home in the presence of God, 
with Christ enthroned by His side in glory, 
what gloom of disappointment to know at 
last that God had no future for mankind 
beyond these few troublous years; that 
Christ was still lying humiliated in the 
grave where His exultant enemies had 
placed Him; that the aspiration for the home 
of joy and peace with God was but a child's 
fancy; and that God had nothing better 
for mankind than this sin-cursed, tem- 
pestuous, disappointing life! 
162 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

How totally different also was the at- 
titude of the Christian, in comparison with 
the Corinthian, concerning the dead. How- 
ever noble had been the conclusion of some 
of her philosophers, the Grecian people 
were under the pall of gravest doubt as to 
the future. If they thought at all of their 
former friends and kin, it was only as 
shadowy inhabitants of some mysterious 
realm where existence had but a question- 
able value. The regime of the gods was 
loveless and indifferent. No comfort could 
ever be taken from the thought of such 
a life to which the departed went. Nothing 
could be expected of the gods! There was 
nought to comfort the smitten breast. The 
tragic losses must be borne by steeling 
the heart against all feeling. If all happi- 
ness, all gladness, disappeared forever for 
the living with the departure of the dear 
ones, then so much the worse for the living. 
This was one of the penalties of existence — 
another one of its incomprehensible mys- 
teries. By the enjoyment of the few scat- 
tered pleasures of existence, one must 
crowd back the thought of death, and bury 
163 



THE RESURRECTION 

the remembrance of those beloved ones 
that had departed. Love must be up- 
rooted, however painful the process; for 
there could be no reunion again with the 
beloved dead. 

Consequently when Paul is accused of 
harboring a delusion and declaring a vain 
hope, he faces the charge. He shows how 
utterly pitiable his condition if he was 
giving circulation to what he knew to be 
a deliberate falsehood. Then he would be 
self-deceived, and nothing could be quite 
so tragic for any human being. 

But this is not the kind of a man we 
know Paul to be. In his absolute honesty 
and frankness he must have been the last 
man on earth to countenance a false hope, 
however welcome and agreeable and com- 
forting it might be. He would have the 
bare, literal truth at all costs! The world 
wishes to know the truth. It insists upon 
having actuality, even though life is made 
less bright by knowing it. It will not be 
soothed by a falsehood. For as Doctor 
Jefferson states: "To prefer a delusion 
which pleases to a truth which makes sad 
164 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

is the deepest and blackest of skepticism. 
If believing what is not true makes the 
world better than believing the truth, then 
is 'the pillared firmament rottenness and 
earth's base built on stubble." To be 
trusting in something that is not true; 
to be struggling to achieve something that 
could never be possible; to have expecta- 
tions concerning another existence that 
could never be realized: this must be the 
very climax of pitiableness. Then infinitely 
better off is the grave stoic or the light- 
hearted, worldly-minded epicurean — for 
these understand human nature better, and 
have no false expectations, and are facing 
life as it really is. These are misled by no 
delusions. They have no hopes which 
later will turn into bitter mockeries. They 
live for the present and expect nothing else. 
They will enjoy its privileges to the full. 
They will endeavor to steel themselves 
against its disasters and troubles. They 
will make no sacrifices, lest they lose some 
little pleasure for themselves out of this 
sorrowful, empty life. They will allow 
nothing, if possible, to disturb their own 
165 



THE RESURRECTION 

ease and physical satisfaction. They will 
seek for spiritual achievements only as it 
gives them some personal delight. They 
will be solicitous about others, only as they 
are compelled so to do by their own neces- 
sities. Never would they struggle for the 
highest virtues, because the price to be 
paid in personal struggle and self-abnega- 
tion was too high. They would give to the 
sensualist equal right as to the idealist 
to follow his own bent if only, thereby, sat- 
isfaction came to him. He knew that life 
was but for the brief, hurrying years; let 
him spend them as he liked, irrespective of 
others. 

But if these are right, then Paul is wrong. 
Then he has utterly misinterpreted human 
nature. He has been believing an untruth 
and trying to get men to fall into his own 
grievous blunder. In the meantime his 
efforts have been misdirected. His energies 
have been wasted. He should have been 
teaching humanity to look elsewhere for its 
gladness than to Christ, and to be building 
its virtues upon some other foundations 
than obedience to Him, and looking for 
166 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

the realization of its hopes to some one else 
than the Christ who foretold His resur- 
rection and then failed to rise again. Paul 
should have been declaring just how limited 
and small in power and possibility human 
nature really was, that men might not 
strive for vast things, nor hope for the sub- 
limities, nor fail to drink the nectar from 
every cup of gratification so soon to be 
taken forever from the lips. Let him not 
prate to short-lived men of sin and right- 
eousness, for each, with a wild frenzy, shall 
claim the right to decide for himself what 
can bring the highest joys to mankind, 
rushing on the swift-moving current of the 
years to the engulfing and destroying grave ! 
Paul insists upon knowing the truth! 
He will not believe in impossibilities, how- 
ever sweet to fancy's taste. He will not 
trust in unrealities, however advantageous 
may seem the consequences to mankind. 
If man was made to die forever, he must 
know it. Paul is ever mindful of the awak- 
ening from the delusion. He foresees the 
gloom, infinitely more terrible than the 
darkness of an unwelcome truth, when the 
167 



THE RESURRECTION 

bare reality is known. If human nature 
is a mean thing he wishes to know it, that 
he may preach to men on their real level 
and have them live accordingly. If man 
is but of small significance to God, a bundle 
of atoms destined for destruction — vastly 
better to know this than, inflated by false 
imaginations, to fancy a kinship with God. 
If fleshly propulsions are the normal and 
proper tendencies of human nature, then 
by all means let us know it, that we strive 
not insanely for a holiness of character 
which God never purposed for us. If self- 
interest is the supreme law of life, and 
every being is to get the most out of his 
brief existence, irrespective of the welfare 
of other equally selfish people, then let us 
be fairly informed of this that the struggle 
may be on equal terms, with no handicaps 
for any, and so that there be no demand 
for foolish self-denial, which, adding no 
permanent glory or benefit to others, de- 
tracts from our own fleeting joys. Paul 
abhors the policy of concealment concern- 
ing what we are and what we ought to do 
and where we are going. He knows that if 
168 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

he has been believing falsely in the resur- 
rection of Christ, he has cherished and 
fostered a deception, the consequences of 
which to himself and others can be only 
direst woe. 

In another respect also must Paul and 
his fellow Christians be considered of all 
men most pitiful if Christ be not risen. 
We are certain that they had the most 
exalted personal character-standards that 
the world has ever witnessed. Never be- 
fore has the sense of right and wrong been 
so keenly developed. Never had conscience 
held so exalted a regimen. Inspired by 
the character of Jesus, they were unparal- 
leled in their zeal for freedom from sin, 
and for possession of the Christian graces. 
They believed in a time when sin would be 
overcome and righteousness regnant in 
universal sway. But how could such a 
transcendent life be produced? They knew 
but one adequate cause. They must be 
transfigured by the living, ever-working 
Christ, who could dwell within the soul. 
He who had proven His Lordship in the 
realm of the spirit by His victory over 
169 



THE RESURRECTION 

death, He could be trusted to move myste- 
riously and powerfully upon the inward 
natures of men to bring them into con- 
formity with Himself. Their exalted con- 
fidence caused them to build a theology 
around Christ. Their belief was ' 'Christ 's- 
centric." They conceived of Him as the 
Divine Son, ever at work upon men's 
spirits to transform them into a holy glory. 
They did not delude themselves into be- 
lieving that this most difficult and highest 
of all achievements — a character where 
goodness was enthroned — was possible with- 
out divine help. And to their risen Christ 
did they look for that assistance without 
which they knew they could do nothing. 
They steadfastly believed that the sancti- 
fication of character would occur where 
the soul could come into true, inner in- 
timacy with Him who had been raised 
from the dead and now through spiritual 
powers would influence His own into spirit- 
ual glory. Christ, they believed, was ever 
• at work upon their natures; and all that 
was necessary for their character develop- 
ment, He, the Divine Lord, would abun- 
170 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

dantly supply. His spirit would ever be 
leading His children into the doing of His 
good pleasure. In this hope they lived. 
In this faith they worshiped Christ. In 
this assurance they addressed their prayers 
to Him. The risen Christ was the very 
center of their religious life. They could 
not have loved Him and trusted Him and 
worshiped Him and prayed to Him did 
they not believe in His resurrection. Dis- 
prove His resurrection and they are robbed 
of every sacred dogma upon which their 
religious practices of life depended and 
through which they nourished their inner 
life. Take away their faith in Him, and 
they are despoiled of everything. They 
are left without a faith — and being without 
this, every joy and hope and aspiration 
of their spirits has vanished. They are, 
indeed, of all men most miserable. Like 
gardens struck by wilting frosts are their 
despairing hearts ! 

But Paul, "knowing in whom he had 

believed," reckons the Christian not the 

most pitiable and miserable of beings, but 

the most fortunate and exultant and blessed. 

171 



THE RESURRECTION 

They belong to God. He owns them for 
His children by sending Christ to redeem 
them. He raises this beloved Christfrom 
the dead, in order that loving Him and 
worshiping and serving Him they may be 
changed into His likeness and share with 
Him in His glory. His followers may be 
filled with an indescribable rejoicing, be- 
cause through Him every hope and ex- 
pectation for this life and the next will be 
abundantly realized. 



172 



CHAPTER IX 

THE RESURRECTION AND CHRIST, 
THE FIRSTFRUITS 



In the light of Revelation, this earthly life of 
man, of which Nature is the mold and Science 
the interpreter, is discerned to be but a span on an 
endless path of progress which passes through 
the heavens and mounts to the unveiled presence 
of God, where man is affirmed to be void of all 
imperfections even when judged by divine stand- 
ards. — Weir. 

Jesus was, like no other, the Spiritual Man. 
As a Quickening Spirit, He becomes a principle of 
life for other spirits. — Sabatier. 

The blessedness offered to men in the revelation 
of grace made by Jesus outweighs the wretched- 
ness brought upon them through the sin intro- 
duced by Adam. That which Adam lost, Christ 
restored. — Alger. 

Thou waitest, reaper lone, 
Until the multitudinous grain hath grown. 
Scythe-bearer, when thy blade 
Harvests my flesh, let me be unafraid. 
God's husbandman thou art, 
In His un withering sheaves, 0, bind my heart! 

— Knowles. 



CHAPTER IX 

The Resurrection and Christ, the First- 
fruits 

But now is Christ risen from the dead, and 
become the first-fruits of them that slept. For 
since by man came death, by man came also the 
resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, 
even so in Christ shall all be made alive. But 
every man in his own order: Christ the first-fruits; 
afterward they that are Christ's at His coming. — 
Verses 20-23. 

In the shadow of the denial of Christ's 
resurrection Paul can not long linger. He 
must needs move out into the light of 
positive affirmations concerning his Lord. 
Having demonstrated the pitiable weakness 
of every doubt and the inherent absurdity 
of every denial, he returns in the ecstasy 
of his faith to the sublime declaration that 
indeed Christ has been raised from the 
dead. Unquestionable as the flaming sun 
175 



THE RESURRECTION 

in the summer sky is this sublime fact. 
Substantial as the towering mountain peak 
is this truth. Irrefutable as any authen- 
ticated, historic event is this remarkable 
phenomenon. To this Scripture bears wit- 
ness, and the testimony of many beholders 
of the risen Christ adds incontrovertible 
evidence. This sublime event has its amaz- 
ing place in the divine system. This central 
message of their preaching has holiest 
relevance to the hope and welfare of all 
mankind. In declaring this valid truth, 
the gospel hearers have the most astounding 
revelation ever put into the charge of men 
to speak to the race. They have in this 
fact something to herald, to which the 
world will listen with eager interest, since 
upon it rests mankind's salvation from 
guilt, and redemption into righteousness, 
and cure for despondency. 

Through the actuality of the resurrec- 
tion did Paul and his associates free them- 
selves from the charge of falsification. 
They were declaring God's eternal truth. 
They were spokesmen for the Most High, 
making known God's latest revelation, 
176 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

through which a new spiritual order was 
to be inaugurated among men. They were 
not iniquitously misrepresenting God by 
attributing to Him what He had not done. 
They were but informing mankind of God's 
supreme intervention in their behalf, and 
making known the larger purposes of the 
Most High, in which His children were to 
share. They have been commissioned by 
the Father-God to speak the words of heal- 
ing to wounded sorrowing hearts. Their 
loved ones, departed out of this earthly 
life, had begun a heavenly life through 
the power of Christ. They were sharing 
with their Lord the glorious destiny pre- 
pared for those who love Him. They had 
passed into a fullness of existence through 
their God who had redeemed and rescued 
them. Of all men they were consequently 
the most rejoicing and blessed and tri- 
umphant, having this consummate proof 
of the co-operation of the eternal Creator. 
They felt sure of His all-loving assistance. 
No dream of theirs concerning a purified, 
exultant, spiritual life that would not be 

realized because Christ was raised. It was 
12 177 



THE RESURRECTION 

through Him that their new life was pos- 
sible. Through Him was to be the en- 
riched life here and the inheritance to come. 
Christ is their all in all. Because He has 
escaped the grave and sits at the right 
hand of God can they love and worship 
and trust Him. 

Having banished forever from his heart 
and mind the denials and doubts with which 
the message of the resurrection of Christ 
has been assailed, Paul proceeds now, as the 
next great division of his argument, to 
interpret the central fact from still another 
viewpoint. Because he knows Christ has 
risen, a mighty assurance possesses him. 
He interprets mankind through Christ. 
The kinship with Him is a prophecy and 
pledge of victories to come through Him. 
His participation in human nature and His 
victory over the limitations of the earthly 
life is basis for man's participation with 
Him in His experiences. 

The one all-important conclusion to 

which Paul comes is that men are to share 

in the experiences of Christ. They are to 

be partakers of His exaltation. Paul in- 

178 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

sists upon every one seeing himself as re- 
lated to Christ. His resurrection is not 
some isolated miracle out of which the 
race is to receive no lesson and learn no 
new truth. No greater harm could come 
to man than to misinterpret this divine 
fact, or to fail to see how it had tremendous 
bearings upon every human being that 
would ever have an existence through God. 
That men are so intimately connected 
with Christ, that they are to share in His 
triumphs — this is what Paul steadfastly 
insists upon! 

To illustrate this thought of man's essen- 
tial oneness with Christ, Paul asserts that 
by His resurrection Christ is the firstfruits 
of them that slept. The beautiful and sug- 
gestive figure was understood by every one 
conversant with Jewish customs. At the 
beginning of the harvest, when the waving 
fields began to ripen, a selected sheaf of 
ripe grain was taken to Jerusalem and, with 
impressive ceremony, dedicated to God 
who had given the increase. As the priests 
waved the offered sheaf before the worship- 
ing multitudes, the thought came afresh 
179 



THE RESURRECTION 

into the peoples' hearts, that not merely 
this small handful of ripened ears belonged 
to God ; all the crop not yet garnered 
was His. It was all sacred in His sight. 
The sheaf was a token of His ownership 
and care. God it was who had brought the 
first ears to their beautiful maturity. Did 
He do it for this isolated sheaf, He would 
do it also for the entire crop now hasten- 
ing toward its yellow ripeness. He would 
watch over it until it came to its perfection. 
This bunch of ripened grain would be fol- 
lowed by the full harvest, which would 
come also to its maturity by His divine 
co-operation. Having done it for a part 
of the field, He would do so for the entire 
waving harvest. He would not relinquish His 
task until, by aid of sunshine and moisture 
and fertility of soil, He made the meadows 
to stand heavy with their burden of the 
many sheaves. For if God did it for the 
one sheaf, He could do it for all — since 
His interest and purpose reached all, 
and His power manifested itself in the last 
ripened sheaf as well as in the first. The 
firstfruits were thus symbolical of God's 
180 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

entire harvest. The complete crop be- 
longed to Him, because without Him nothing 
could be done. So while the multitudes 
thanked Him for the firstfruits, they were 
joyfully to trust Him for the remainder 
of the coming harvest. 

By the aid of this beautiful figure would 
Paul have us recognize our relationship 
to our risen Christ. He is the "first- 
fruits," God's choicest representative out 
of mankind — the fairest fruit of human 
nature. In Him God's plans have come to 
their glorious maturity. His career has 
reached its perfection in His survival over 
the grave. From the day of Christ's hu- 
man birth God had this event of His res- 
urrection as the climax phenomenon of 
Christ's existence. Toward this had all 
of God's creationary power been working. 
And when He rises triumphant over the 
grave His victory had a prophetic value. 
He typifies what is to be the common lot. 
He is mankind's representative as surely 
as is that first ripened sheaf the represen- 
tative of the great harvest that is to come. 
Was Christ sacred enough in God's sight 
181 



THE RESURRECTION 

to be given an after-life? So are men, 
Christ's brothers! Was He glorified after 
death? So are we to be. What is the 
typical human existence? We see it in 
the risen Christ, just as the unripe grain 
far off yet from its perfection might see 
itself in that one sheaf presented in its 
beautiful maturity to God at the temple. 
All humanity belongs to God. The 
entire wheat-field is His possession. The 
divine forces operating in Christ to bring 
Him out of death into life will be in opera- 
tion also until all of God's spiritual off- 
spring know themselves sharers in Christ's 
victory over the grave. We are to be iden- 
tified with Him in all of His experiences. 
His resurrection, therefore, has a typical 
significance. Through it men compre- 
hend themselves. His resurrection is but 
"an extraordinary evidence of an ordinary 
event." Through Him God demonstrates 
what is to be the lot of all. However diffi- 
cult, therefore, the task of proving the 
resurrection to the materialist or to the 
doubter, this demonstrates it forever. Noth- 
ing more is needed when we have this. 
182 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

Christ, by His own mysterious triumph, 
"brought life and immortality to light," 
in order that we might know what God had 
ordained as the normal experience for all 
His obedient children. He becomes thus 
"in His revival the leader of a mighty 
host." The multitudes will follow in His 
footsteps, because all are led of God, as 
Christ was. For all humanity belongs to 
God, as Christ belonged to Him. 

Christ's resurrection demonstrates, 
therefore, the basal law which God has es- 
tablished for all of humanity. What the 
principle is, Christ reveals. Reasoning con- 
cerning mortality and immortality, Paul 
contends that in Christ the old law of death, 
under which man must have his earthly 
existence, is supplemented by a higher 
law of life. The first law of death was 
written in the very constitution of man. 
As a part of nature he is subject to decay. 
Even from the cradle he has upon him the 
marks of his transciency. He was not en- 
dowed with changelessness. He was made 
to die. His physical organism was created 
to experience birth, growth, maturity; then 
183 



THE RESURRECTION 

age, then death. His body, once feeling 
the throbbing strength of youth, must 
lose its power and cease to functionize. 
Like an instrument in constant use it must 
finally wear out. Like a machine ever 
grinding out its product its parts would 
inevitably fail. Like a glorious day, the 
body would have its rosy dawn, its sunny 
noontime, its shadowy twilight, then the 
dark. His body was not built to last for- 
ever. Upon it everywhere is written the 
law of change and decay. By no power 
of will nor desire nor struggle can man's 
spirit ward off age with all its accompanying 
changes. The current of the years brings 
the body nearer and nearer to the mysteri- 
ous ocean. As certain as the law of gravi- 
tation which swings the stars, as sure as 
the ebb and flow of the tides, is the law of 
mortality governing man's body. 

But there is release and escape from 
this lower law by the higher law which 
Christ revealed. In Himself He showed 
not merely what it was to be mortal, but 
what it was to be immortal. Immortality 
was the final law of His life as much as 
184 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

mortality was for humanity. If death is 
written in man's very nature under the 
first law, then we may know through Christ, 
who had power to survive death, that there 
is another principle according to which 
deathlessness through the resurrection is 
the final law governing the human spirit. 
Is there no escape from the first law, then 
there is the universal reign also of the second 
law for those who love God. 

Until Christ's resurrection man had 
thought himself only under the influence 
and power of the law transmitted through 
Adam. Adam had been, as it were, the 
official head of the race. What he was, de- 
termined what others should be. What he 
was by nature and endowment regulated 
what all his offspring should be. What ex- 
periences came to him must, by inheritance, 
therefore, be universal experiences to all 
who received their life and nature from him. 
Just as the after fruits are of the same 
nature as the firstfruits, so must all mankind 
expect to be what Adam was. His qualities 
could not be transcended. His limitations 
could not be escaped. The law of con- 
185 



THE RESURRECTION 

tinuity and similarity would prevent any 
difference between Adam and his stock. 
By necessity he would confer upon his 
children his own qualities. They must all 
conform to his type. They could be noth- 
ing else than their progenitor, any more than 
a lily could beget nothing but a lily or an 
oak produce nothing but an oak. Adam's 
children would know nothing more about 
themselves and God's purposes concerning 
them than what they learned through him 
who had been their physical progenitor. 
What was seen in Adam must then be ex- 
pected as man's normal condition. He 
would determine the type. 

But the startling thing about Adam was 
that he was mortal. As a concluding 
physical experience, after all the events 
of his life, death came to him. He could 
not escape it. Whatever might have been 
once in the mind of God for him, he at last 
knew physical decay, and had to submit, 
however unwillingly, to death. This was 
the law of his nature, imposed upon it by 
God. This was the inexorable principle 
of his existence. After youth came age, 
186 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

after strength and power came weakness and 
inability. After maturity came decrepi- 
tude; after the hilltop, the valley. After 
the buoyancy of life, the quiet of death. 

And as part of his very nature did he 
submit to his offspring his mortality. By 
physical connection with him they were 
under the physical laws that governed 
him. Kinship with him made them sharers 
in all of his earthly experiences. To die, 
therefore, was the lot of all. Mankind 
could expect only death. Like falling leaves 
of autumn must the generations come and 
go. Nowhere could there be any perma- 
nence, for man's body was not made to 
live forever. The weak and the mighty, 
the evil and the good, all must succumb at 
last to the attack of death. 

And because we understand ourselves 
merely as the offspring of Adam does the 
hope of immortality burn so low in our 
hearts. He was created merely a "living 
soul," endowed with certain physical ap- 
titudes and capacities. He is superior to 
the inanimate world through gift of the 
Creator. He has the wondrous power of 
187 



THE RESURRECTION 

"life, even though under certain limitations 
and conditions. He is, however, but a 
"natural man," subject as were the animals 
to the law of death; subject as are all living 
things in the physical world about him to 
decay and dissolution. And when we think 
of man only in these physical qualities 
which are so transient and which relate 
him so fundamentally to the passing phys- 
ical world, is it easy to doubt his immor- 
tality, and in gloomy pessimism to assert 
his utter annihilation when we see his 
frail body fall under the crushing attack 
of death. He seems then to have no more 
meaning in the plan of God than the tree 
shattered by the lightning, or the deer 
consumed by the tiger, or the lily wilted 
and burned by the fire. 

We are justified in asking, then, in what 
respect the coming of Christ inaugurated 
a new order for mankind? He demon- 
strated that for man God had ordained two 
laws. The first was the law of death. 
This he inherited from Adam. To this he 
was inexorably subject when, as a human 
being, he entered upon his physical life. 
188 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

In obedience to this, after an existence 
shorter or longer as circumstances deter- 
mined, he must expect his body to submit 
to death and dissolution. This he could 
not escape. He must taste the bitter cup, 
whatever his desires were. And to this 
inexorable principle of existence even Christ 
had to submit when, as Savior, He entered 
into our physical, human existence. Hav- 
ing entered life through the portal of birth, 
He must pass out of it by the portal of 
death. His body, too, must undergo the 
tragic ordeal of physical overthrow. His 
enemies would use one of death's most 
horrible instruments to bring His life to 
its close, and would slay Him upon the 
cross. His very humanity necessitated His 
bodily death. 

But Christ did not merely die; He was 
raised again! He returned to life! He did 
not merely show that He was subject to 
the universal law, governing all mankind 
and marking each man as a helpless victim. 
By the power of God, He arose triumphant 
out of the grave that had held Him. Death 
could not master Him. And by His re- 
189 



THE RESURRECTION 

newed life did He prove that there was a 
second law governing mankind — the law 
of Life! He made known to all mankind 
that God's plans for man did not cease 
with a physical dissolution; that some 
higher regnant force had its fundamental 
place in his life as much as did death; that 
springtime was written in his very being 
as well as drear winter; that dawn was as 
much a part of his constitution as midnight. 
Was he subject to death? Then he was 
subject also to life — the kind of life which 
Christ had when He was raised out of death 
into His resurrection glory. As surely 
and inexorably as the one ruled would the 
other rule also. 

Man's existence can not be held, then, 
to cease with his bodily disintegration, in- 
asmuch as Christ demonstrated the real- 
ity of a second life. Christ heralded that 
death does not end all, but that God's 
loving plans for His children include another 
existence. The failure of our physical body, 
by which we are related as material organ- 
ism to this visible world, proves by no 
means, therefore, the extinction of all life 
190 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

and the cessation of all existence. Judg- 
ment concerning this vast matter must be 
based upon other evidence. This Christ 
supplied when He arose. He made known, 
once for all, what the world had never 
known before, that by God's endowment 
we are spiritual beings, capable of con- 
tinued existence. The body may succumb 
according to the law of death, and we must 
lay it away into the grave; but there is 
something about man that can survive 
death and can conquer the grave. To this 
irresistible higher power, compelling him 
to life, he is as certainly subject, as he is to 
the lower principle transmitted by Adam, 
by which he is amenable to death. 

Christ's resurrection makes clear the 
regnancy of the second law. Death is not 
the final experience in man's existence. 
For this he was not created. To this he 
does not move as to his great culmination. 
It is but an event in his existence — to be 
sure, a mysterious, disturbing event — but 
only an event, through which he moves to 
larger things, to a vaster life, to his being's 
true climax, to participation with Christ 
191 



THE RESURRECTION 

of the things that God has prepared for 
them that love Him. The incomprehen- 
sible episode must come inevitably; but our 
divinely-endowed personalities shall survive 
it, as does the vessel, when passing through 
the narrows at the head of some quiet har- 
bor, it pushes out into the unlimited freedom 
of the vast ocean. 

If, through physical relationship to 
Adam, we are therefore subject to the 
verdict of earth, "All must die," then 
through spiritual kinship with Christ are 
we under the verdict of heaven, "All shall 
be made alive." The final decree under 
which humanity has its being is not de- 
struction and dissolution. It is survival 
and continuance. Adam but partially ex- 
pressed our nature. We were potentially 
greater than he was able to show. In him 
we see ourselves as sinfuls, immature, in- 
complete. Christ is our true type. He 
represents us as God sees us. He caused 
us to know ourselves. He unfolds the in- 
herent possibilities of our natures. In Him 
we recognize with what a vast endowment 
God has enriched us. In Christ we see 
192 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

ourselves holy, developed, eternal. Through 
the "first Adam," who was of the earth, 
earthly, we are related to this physical uni- 
verse, are subject to its limitations, must 
succumb to its will, and must expect to 
have the body sink back into the dust of 
earth. Through the "second Adam," who 
was spiritual and heavenly, we are related 
to the spiritual and heavenly realms. That 
life is as much for us by kinship to God 
through Christ, as this present life is for us 
by kinship to God through Adam. That 
higher existence is as much our possession 
as is this. All the heavenly must belong 
to us, because Christ declares us to be the 
sons of God. 

Seeing ourselves in Christ we are sure that 
those that are "in Christ" shall, by the gift 
of God, share in the glory of His resurrec- 
tion and exaltation. By faith, being joined 
spiritually to Him who is our true progenitor 
through the resurrection, do we become 
heirs to that immortality which is our most 
sacred potentiality. What mankind thus 
needs the most, Christ becomes for us — the 
true head of the spiritual race. We in- 
13 193 



THE RESURRECTION 

terpret and evaluate ourselves not accord- 
ing to Adam's physical standard, with its 
rebellion and aloofness from God, and 
death and dissolution. We behold what 
we are to be in the image of Christ; in His 
holy obedience to God; in His conquest of 
death; in His glorification. To Him, as 
our spiritual progenitor, we shall corre- 
spond by surrender to the spiritual laws 
that animated Him and that gave Him the 
victory. By union with Him we partake 
not merely of His spiritual grace, but also 
of His superphysical power. We are ex- 
alted to the existence where our personality 
unfolds to its highest capacities. 

He lifts us out of the purely earthly and 
physical life, where we live only for the 
body, and prepares us in body and spirit 
for eternal companionship with Himself. 
He is in reality, therefore, the true head 
of the race, and not Adam. The Adam that 
sinned and died is not mankind's represen- 
tative. That sublime honor belongs to our 
exalted Christ, the sinless and the immortal 
One. He entered into our earthly ex- 
istence to reinterpret us to ourselves; to 
194 






PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

show us how great this brief, human ex- 
istence could become in its righteousness; 
and to persuade us that beyond the grave, 
the new being formed in Christ, goes on its 
triumphant way Godward. He thus rep- 
resents the new humanity that is to exist 
before the face of God. To this endless 
life He, by His resurrection, bears witness. 
To this life He opens the door. Through 
Him we know that even though we succumb 
to the laws of our physical being, there is a 
glorious future into which we are to enter. 
Because He is the " fir stfr nits," we will fol- 
low after Him. Those asleep in Him shall 
become joined to Him in God's holy harvest. 
For life, not death, is the law of our being. 



195 



i 



CHAPTER X 
THE INVINCIBLE CHRIST 



I am the Resurrection and the Life. 

—John 11:25. 
It is God's purpose to restore creation to the 
unity which it had originally, but which has been 
broken by sin. He is to bring all things into their 
normal conditions by Christ, the Redeemer of 
sinful men. — S almond. 

Strong Son of God, Immortal Love, 

Whom we, that have not seen Thy face, 
By faith, and faith alone, embrace, 

Believing, where we can not prove. 

Thou seemest human and divine — 
The highest, holiest, manhood, Thou. 
Our wills are ours, we know not how; 

Our wills are ours to make them Thine. 

— Tennyson. 

Lord and Master of us all! 
Whate'er our name or sign, 

We owe Thy sway, we hear Thy call, 

We test our lives by Thine. 

— Whittier. 
If Jesus Christ is a man — 

And only a man — I say 
That of all mankind I cleave to Him, 

And to Him will I cleave alway. 

If Jesus Christ is a God — 
And the only God — I swear 

1 will follow Him through heaven and hell, 
xThe earth, the sea, the air. 

— Gilder. 



CHAPTER X 

The Invincible Christ 

Then cometh the end, when He shall have de- 
livered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; 
when He shall have put down all rule and all 
authority and power. For He must reign till 
He hath put all enemies under His feet. The last 
enemy that shall be destroyed is death. For He 
hath put all things under His feet. But when He 
saith, All things are put under Him, it is manifest 
that He is excepted which did put all things under 
Him. And when all things shall be subdued unto 
Him, then shall the Son also Himself be subject 
unto Him that put all things under Him, that God 
may be all in all. — Verses 2^-28. 

In the fervor of His devotion to Christ, 
Paul can not refrain from dwelling upon 
the place of Christ in the final triumph 
which God has in store for mankind. 
When humanity is freed from its sin; when 
it has been redeemed from every iniquity; 
when it has been rescued from all of its 
199 



THE RESURRECTION 

earthliness; when it stands exalted in the 
presence of God: then the person to whom 
the everlasting glory of the amazing victory 
will be given is Christ the Messiah, Christ 
the Son of Man and of God. This was the 
exalted conviction animating Paul's heart. 
The future belonged to the Christ who, 
having existed in the form of God, conde- 
scended to men of low estate, that He might 
redeem them to God. 

This ascription of honor declared His 
triumphant Messiahship and demonstrated 
His all-conquering Divinity. His resurrec- 
tion from the grave was prophecy of the 
larger exaltation that must inevitably come 
to Him. In His life there was being dis- 
played a vast plan of God, the outlines of 
which men could comprehend. Christ's 
incarnation and work and resurrection were 
but initial steps in that unfolding plan of 
Christ's existence that some day must 
come to a sublime consummation. His 
resurrection was not an accident, nor an 
after-thought with God. It was part of one 
vast purpose concerning His Son, stretch- 
ing from eternity to eternity. And in the 
200 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

light of Christ's resurrection did Paul ever 
interpret His Lord. And, beholding Him 
as the risen Lord, could Paul come to but 
one conclusion concerning Christ. 

The resurrection compelled Paul to a 
particular theology relative to His Lord. 
Never could he think of Him merely as a 
Galilean Teacher, a Nazareth carpenter, 
a human teacher, a Jewish reformer. Every 
conclusion that Paul might have held as to 
Christ was altered by the strategic mean- 
ing of His survival of death. Paul must 
conceive of Him in larger terms. Such a 
Christ could not be a mere human being. 
He was exalted above mankind. He held 
a unique relationship to God. To Him 
extraordinary honors must be paid as God's 
perfect plans came to their consummation. 

The merely worldly-minded believer in 
Christ has ever inclined to interpret Christ 
in terms of His humanity. Evaluating 
Him merely as the Son of Mary and the 
victim of Pilate, some men would classify 
Him merely as a man — a wonderful man, to 
be sure, but still only a man. He is Jesus, 
the Jew — not Christ, the Son! But such a 
201 



THE RESURRECTION 

low evaluation of Christ does not content 
Paul. This miraculous Being raised from 
the dead is by this very fact to be under- 
stood as more than man. He is God's 
Promised-One for whom Israel and the 
world has waited. God having done for 
Him what He had done for no other human 
being that had ever lived, Paul was per- 
suaded that peculiar honor and glory must 
come to Christ in the future Kingdom of 
God, when the earthly career of the race 
was completed and the spiritualized life 
in all of its wonder came into existence. 

In that supernal Kindgom of God Paul's 
eye could behold but one Being transcend- 
ently great enough to share rulership and 
dominion with God. Paul was sure that su- 
premacy must belong eventually to Christ, 
because of the grandeur of His character. 
Reasoning from Christ's victory over death, 
Paul concluded that Christ must have 
universal dominion. This lowly Galilean 
Teacher, bravely submitting to God's plans 
and experiencing death for the redemption 
of mankind, to Him infinite exaltation must 
come. His ultimate triumph was inevi- 
202 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

table. To Him, even in His earthly life, 
God had given such transcendent might 
that finally against Him nothing could 
prevail. All would be in subjection to 
Him, and all would acknowledge His right- 
ful supremacy. Against Him no earthly, 
physical thing could prevail. His personal 
defeat of death was but type of His larger 
victories, His far-reaching conquests. There 
could be no part of the universe where He 
would not hold sway, where His name was 
not honored, and His claims unacknowl- 
edged. Before Him, in recognition of His 
deserved authority, every knee must bow. 
He must become sovereign. 

Nor must we lightly forget this momen- 
tous conclusion of Paul's concerning Christ. 
All too easily, during these Christian cen- 
turies, has the Church lost sight of Christ 
in His completeness and His exaltation. 
We have remembered Him in His humility. 
We recollect Him as surrounded by a 
vacillating group of disciples, harassed by 
His enemies, apparently unsuccessful in His 
mission, weeping in disappointment and 
grief over unbelieving Jerusalem — spending 
203 



THE RESURRECTION 

His brief years in the small, despised land 
of Palestine, receiving no honor, winning 
no recognition among the great of earth, 
vainly struggling against the errors and sins 
of His time, and finally falling ingloriously 
as prey into the bloody hands of His perse- 
cutors. But from this picture of the hu- 
miliated Christ Paul turns our gaze. He 
lifts our eye from the dust into the light- 
touched skies. He can see only the Christ 
glorified. The One once walking on earth 
sits enthroned with God in heavenly places. 
The Lord of the Church is not a defeated, 
misunderstood, persecuted, crucified Christ. 
This same Lord, raised from the dead, made 
victor over His enemies, reigneth forever 
with God! A new volume in the career of 
Christ began to be written with His resur- 
rection. Did His earthly life deal with hu- 
man limitation and earthly circumstances 
and implacable enemies, then there shall 
be a heavenly life in which He holds holy, 
undisputed sway, in everlasting honor and 
glory. 

There was but one destiny open to 
Christ, so says Paul. He must reign! 
204 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

Resident in Him were all those graces and 
qualities and capacities which must one day 
elevate Him to a rulership beyond the dream 
of those that loved Him. Sovereignty 
must be His. Every power that had set 
itself against the regimen of God, He must 
destroy. Every enemy that raised bloody 
hands of rebellion against the holy author- 
ity of God must be brought low. Every 
tyranny of evil that hindered God's perfect 
way with mankind must be crushed. Every 
authority not basing itself upon the will 
of God must be nullified. Every false as- 
sumption of ownership over mankind must 
be abrogated. Every power militating 
against man's largest welfare must be over- 
thrown. Every agency or institution hos- 
tile to man's highest peace must be trans- 
formed. Whatever destroyed man's com- 
munion with God, or disturbed His spiritual 
peace, or made difficult His obedience to 
God, or prevented His spiritual maturity, 
must eventually fall through the displeasure 
of God. From all of these escape must be 
found. But who could accomplish this 
appalling task? Paul's ready answer is, 
205 



THE RESURRECTION 

"Christ!" He is God's conquering One 
bringing the world into willing subjection 
to God. 

Paul was persuaded that there was a 
spiritual Kingdom that would abide for- 
ever! He could look beyond this world's 
troublous age to that blissful time where 
Christ would set up the new order that 
should never pass away. Against the dark 
background of the present He saw, lifting 
itself in stately wonder, the beauties and 
glories of that future Kingdom. What 
the history of mankind had been, Paul 
knew full well. The retrospect was pitiful, 
gloomy, discouraging. Man had led but 
the "Adam" life. The body had been up- 
permost. Humanity had been expelled 
from its Paradise. Outside the gates it 
toiled and grieved and sinned. No longer 
did God walk with man in the cool of the 
evening. The spell of loving trust had been 
broken. Disobedience had darkened the 
sky and blackened the heart. God was no 
longer the intimate companion. To do His 
will was no longer the joy of mankind. 
Now the tempest was tossing over mankind. 
206 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

Men had followed the evil tendencies of 
their hearts. Sin reigned. Instead of peace 
and happiness and confidence, there was 
hatred and misery and mistrust and selfish- 
ness. Humanity was drinking the bitter 
cup of its own disobedience. Everywhere 
sin was in the ascendency. Everywhere 
ruled evil thought, evil habits, evil deeds. 
Everywhere was moral pollution, spiritual 
decay, base degeneracy, insane forgetful- 
ness of God, wild rebellion against Him. 
Humanity had been a black failure — an 
utter disappointment to God. Death 
seemed a fitting climax to lives so perverted 
and ugly. Apparently the high purpose 
for which God created man had been utterly 
defeated. In vain His wondrous provi- 
dences, His sublime truths, His holy revela- 
tions! Meaningless His will! Unheeded 
His laws! Anarchy everywhere! God 
seems to be conquered! God seems the 
great failure! His creatures have willingly 
broken away from His purpose and, know- 
ingly defied His control. Left to them- 
selves, without purifying contact with God, 
mankind has been overtaken by the tempest 
207 



THE RESURRECTION 

of shame and sorrow and guilt. And as the 
climax of all human calamities, death had 
hurled its powers of destruction at mankind 
and crushed to earth the helpless genera- 
tions. Death ruled! 

All of this Paul knew with painful 
clearness. The regnancy of death ap- 
palled him. But it did not darken his 
confidence. He knew Christ, and He 
removed every doubt from Paul's heart. 
Through Him the golden day would dawn 
when a new kingdom would be estab- 
lished. Then all humanity would be sub- 
dued. In that Kingdom there would be 
no evil. Sin could find no place in it. 
Sorrow's tears here were forever dried. In 
it man's spiritual nature would be dominant. 
All holiness would be in the ascendency. 
Harmony with God would be the blessed 
rule of man's life. To do God's will and to 
abide in Him, that would be the high privi- 
lege of all. In this Kingdom nothing that 
defiles could stand before the pure gaze 
of God. Here God's redeemed find their 
endless joy and felicity. And in it there 
is no death. No longer is humanity sub- 
208 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

ject to tragic change and pitiful dissolution. 
No longer is he easy prey to death. It is 
abolished. Here it can not exist. God no 
longer gives it a place in His plans. Having 
fulfilled His purpose upon earth, it can 
never assail the Heavenly Kingdom, because 
God will not let it enter. The risen Christ 
having conquered it, He keeps faithful 
watch against its entrance, that it never- 
more may assail and harass the redeemed 
children of God. And Christ, the all- 
conquering Son, having finished His ma- 
jestic work of redemption, having brought 
every proud, defiant foe into subjection, de- 
livers the Kingdom which He had been 
called to establish to the supreme Father, 
and sits down at His right hand to rule for- 
ever with Him in unclouded glory. 

This is Paul's sublime vision of the future 
Kingdom. He comes to it by a transcend- 
ent faith in the crucified, risen Christ. 
It is He who dominates the ages to come. 
His name shall be above every other name. 
In the presence of God, Christ and His 
loved ones live forever in bliss unspeakable. 
Having come under the holy magnetism 
14 £09 



THE RESURRECTION 

of Christ, Paul can not be satisfied until he 
sees Him as the Masterful One, enthroned 
with God. No longer could He be thought 
of as the merely human, earthly one, born 
of Mary. No longer could mankind think 
of Him merely in terms of the manger 
and the cross and the tomb. His life does 
not end with a dirge ! The heavenly chorus 
around the throne of God hail Him as 
King of Life! The last chapter in His life 
does not deal with His persecution and hu- 
miliation and crucifixion and entombment. 
These were events tragically real, but only 
episodes leading to the glorious consumma- 
tion. For Him a resurrection and ascen- 
sion and glorification! To Him must come 
the Father's loving honors. He that had 
been the despised One on earth, must be 
the exalted One of Heaven. For Him the 
eternal praise sung by exultant chorus of 
cherubim and seraphim. The Christ of 
Bethlehem must also be acclaimed Heaven's 
Prince. To the Lamb slain from the foun- 
dation of the earth belongs glory and 
laud and honor and dominion and power! 
It is this vision of the risen, exalted, 
210 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

sovereign Christ that the world needs now 
to behold. Then shall it have transcendent 
faith also in the victorious Christ. He is 
God's honored One. The work He under- 
took to do He completed. He is victor 
against all that seems to assail Him. Noth- 
ing can finally prevail against Him. No 
device of man, no pride of unholy humanity, 
no sin born in man's black heart can long 
maintain itself against Him whom God 
has honored by raising from the dead. 
His vast plans and purposes must conquer. 
Before Him at last all opposition shall 
skulk away defeated. Proud defiance shall 
feel the heavy blow of His conquering 
strength. He shall be recognized as God's 
Holy Son. The good and the holy of all 
ages and all peoples will acknowledge Him 
as the desire of the nation. He shall be 
spiritual example for all aspiring souls. 
Hungering and thirsting for righteousness, 
men shall turn to Him to be filled. His 
truth shall supersede all other truth. His 
laws shall be recognized as highest wisdom. 
To do His bidding, that will be holiest joy. 
By obedience to Him here, mankind shall 
211 



THE RESURRECTION 

enter with Him into the victory over death. 
No earthly power can prevent Christ's 
spiritual children from sharing with Him 
in the resurrection triumph! The conquer- 
ing, living Christ will bring all things that 
seem inimical to man's holiness and per- 
petuity into peaceful subjection, and His 
life shall be in the spirits of all. Sometime 
in the holy plan of God will the vast con- 
summation come. The earthly kingdom 
in which death rules shall be superseded 
entirely and forever by the Heavenly, where 
the shadow of death never falls athwart 
any life. And He who said, "I am the 
Resurrection and the Life," will forever 
keep His own in the glory of His life. 

Death has been the arch-enemy to man. 
It is the great despoiler. It robs of all 
things most precious. It is the climax of 
earthly tragedy. As nothing are pain, 
poverty, disaster in comparison with it. 
No wonder that with death regnant every- 
where, God's power should be questioned. 
The smitten heart standing by some open 
grave grows skeptical of God's love. The 
soul in the shadow of some great desolation, 
212 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

some crushing lonesomeness, easily wonders 
whether there be a God of compassion. 
What though He holds the seas in the 
hollow of His hand, if He can not build 
strong battlements against death's assaults. 
This seems to be the devil's world while 
death rules and life is so easily crushed. 
To ascribe omnipotence to God seems a 
hideous mockery while God sets no bounds 
against death. But God vindicates Him- 
self in the resurrection of Christ. By Him 
does the Omnipotent One show that death 
plays but a temporary part in God's econ- 
omy with the human race. By Christ does 
God show that life is to be triumphant 
over death, and that permanence is to rule 
over all change. In Christ do we see 
our destined lot. The divine love never 
deserts its own. Such a God, revealing 
Himself in Christ, will be loved and obeyed 
and worshiped. Never will humanity offer 
to God its richest spiritual outpourings, 
until we know that He triumphs over all 
of man's enemies, including the arch-de- 
stroyer. 

God is eternal Friend to man. Through 
213 



THE RESURRECTION 

Christ's resurrection does He prove Him- 
self to be such. He makes death meaning- 
less by promising a resurrection into a 
greater life. After death touches man's 
physical organism, God will raise him up 
in a new image. Christ's crowning revela- 
tion, then, is His resurrection. He con- 
quers death by surviving it. He proves 
that the law of life is imperial. Destruc- 
tion may bring low man's body and may 
hurl it into the grave; but over man himself 
it has no dominion. Christ can not be 
defeated. He that reigns in glory with 
God, makes conquest over even man's 
strongest foe. 

Christ is more and more coming into 
His rulership. Evil opposition must van- 
ish as mankind recognizes the wondrous- 
ness of His character and the vastness of 
His powers. Ever is He bringing the 
world into conformity to His will. Not yet 
has the fiendish spell of sin over man's 
heart been broken, nor the alluring of evil 
been annulled, nor the presence of death 
prevented. But the holy time is coming! 
It moves forward as under the power of 
214 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

God's unfailing purposes. Then shall the 
holiness that was in Christ become regnant, 
and those that are His shall be made alive 
at His coming. Then creation shall be 
freed from the power of corruption. No- 
where in God's universe shall there be any 
more death. 

When redeemed mankind has been called 
by God's power to its resurrection glory, 
where Christ rules with God, then shall be 
known in its completeness what God has in 
store for His own. Having completed His 
mediatorial tasks; having brought all alien 
powers into peaceful subjection to Him- 
self; having abolished death by raising 
God's children above its limited sway; 
having won His subjects into perfect, spirit- 
ual harmony with Himself; having called 
His own to dwell forever before the pres- 
ence of God — Christ will then have set 
up His Heavenly Kingdom in its amazing 
perfection, and with God He shall reign 
forever. 



215 



CHAPTER XI 

THE DENIAL AS A DETRIMENT TO 
CHRISTIAN ACTIVITIES 



No man who has not a clear belief in a future 
life can permanently possess a strong sense of duty. 
A man may, indeed, persuade himself during 
various periods of his existence that this sense of 
duty is the better and purer from not being bribed 
by the promise of future reward or stimulated, as 
as he would perhaps say, unhealthily, by the dread 
of future punishment. But his moral life, if he 
has not an eternal future before him, is feeble 
and impoverished. It is not merely that he has 
fewer and feebler motives to right action — it is 
that he has a false estimate, because an under- 
estimate, of his real place in the universe. — Liddon. 

St. Paul must have seen at Anchiale the most 
defiant symbol of cynical contentment, with all 
that is merely animal, in the statue of Sardanapalus, 
represented as snapping his fingers while he uttered 
the sentiment engraved upon the pedestal, 

"Eat, drink, enjoy thyself; the rest is nothing." 

— Farrar. 

Experience informs us that when men act upon 
this belief, their entire nature gives evidence of 
moving in harmony with the laws of its being — 
under its influence character reaches a nobler 
stature, and the troubled spirit finds rest. It gives 
a worthy view of man — and a worthy view of man 
is an essential fact in producing a noble type of man. 
If he thinks himself a creature of to-day, doomed 
to extinction at sunset, he finds it easier to con- 
tract his aspirations and to circumscribe within 
narrower limits his aims and enterprises. — Jeffer- 
son. 



CHAPTER XI 

The Denial as a Detriment to Chris- 
tian Activities 

Else what shall they do which are baptized 
for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? why are 
they then baptized for the dead? And why stand 
we in jeopardy every hour? I protest by your 
rejoicing which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, 
I die daily. If after the manner of men I have 
fought with beasts at Ephesus, what advantageth 
it me, if the dead rise not? let us eat and drink; 
for to-morrow we die. Be not deceived: evil 
communications corrupt good manners. Awake 
to righteousness, and sin not; for some have not 
the knowledge of God : I speak this to your shame. 
— Verses 29-31*. 

Having shown how the belief in Christ's 
resurrection leads finally to a triumphant 
faith in His universal regimen in which 
all the redeemed shall have a glorious share, 
Paul turns now to another line of defense 
in favor of the life after death. He had 
219 



THE RESURRECTION 

previously shown how the denial of the res- 
urrection affects the entire mental attitude 
of the Christian and eventuates in mon- 
strous absurdities. But Paul now contends 
that equally disastrous would be the denial 
in the sphere of external Christian activi- 
ties. How the daily life of the believer 
in Christ would be altered by the denial 
of Christ's resurrection, this is his next 
strong line of argument. He contends 
that only by the power of this hope is 
sufficient motive supplied for the highest 
kind of Christian conduct. Eliminate this, 
and erelong lethargy, narrowness, indif- 
ference, selfishness would transplant all 
kinds of joyous humanitarianism. The 
springs of life would run dry. Life would 
be unmotived! 

To be a Christian meant vast things 
to Paul. He could imagine nothing greater 
than to lead a life dominated in thought, 
word, and deed by Christ. And Paul al- 
ways defined the Christian life in terms of 
self-sacrifice and heroism and service. The 
spirit that animated Christ must rule us. 
The love that swayed Him must constrain 
2£0 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

us. The true follower of Christ was the 
one who was working most loyally and 
persistently for the victory of Christ's 
principles, and for the establishment of 
Christ's Kingdom. Always was he antici- 
pating one holy event. He was waiting 
for the coming of the complete resurrection 
reign of Christ, when the redeemed ones 
should be raised unto that full glorified life 
by the consummation of all things through 
Christ. For every Christian believed that 
only when Christ became fully regnant, 
and His sway over mankind was completely 
recognized, could God bid those departed 
ones in Christ to be transfigured into the 
full resurrection glory. That majestic con- 
summation was therefore, in a measure, 
dependent upon human fidelity. Loyalty 
will hasten the coming of the perfect King- 
dom. Energetic faithfulness would hasten 
the time when Christ could indeed feel that 
He had the universal rule, and that He 
could call His loved ones to the holy joys 
of that blessed, complete life. In a very 
solemn sense, therefore, do the departed 
loved ones depend upon the surviving 
221 



THE RESURRECTION 

Christians for entrance into the highest 
kind of resurrection glory. 

Not yet does Christ have the entire 
victory over the world. Still haughty prin- 
cipalities and powers are in hostile defiance 
to His rule. His sway is still disputed. 
He is not yet the crowned Sovereign. The 
battle still rages. Sin still claims the regi- 
men. Christ's purposes are still unful- 
filled. Death still rules. His Kingdom 
has not come. 

God depends upon men in His struggle 
against evil. He looks to men to conquer 
it. As sin came by human disobedience, 
so must it vanish by human obedience. 
The right must displace the wrong in human 
hearts. Evil customs and institutions must 
be changed. The power of evil principles, 
in whatever form they manifest them- 
selves, must be broken. Men must assail 
all bulwarks of iniquity and capture them 
for God. Humanity must be so reorganized 
that all social institutions are helpers to 
God, aiding man into obedience to Him. 
All that the Christian has must be dedicated 
to this sublime task. To bring in the vic- 
222 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

tory, God must ask for man's complete 
surrender of self to Him. His Kingdom 
will come when men bring it in. Christ's 
full victory and glorification will come when 
men that love Him have done all within 
their human power to co-operate with 
Him. 

To be a Christian, to be a member of 
the Church, meant, then, to be enlisted in 
a bitter warfare; to be enrolled in a long 
struggle; to be co-worker in a vast task; to 
be helper in a mighty scheme. Without 
human co-operation God's plans could never 
be consummated. The task undertaken 
by Christ we must assume. The work be- 
gun by Him we must carry to its comple- 
tion. The sword which He laid down at 
death we must take up. The vision of a 
redeemed humanity that brought Him to 
earth must inspire and energize us into all 
sacrifice and persevering heroism. When 
we see our task as He saw His, and give 
ourselves unstintingly to it as did He, then 
are we His children. Then shall be has- 
tened the perfecting of His full-orbed plans. 
Then shall the departed ones in Christ 
223 



THE RESURRECTION 

come to their complete glorification and 
experience their fullest and highest rewards. 

There is a pitiful majesty in the thought 
of the Omnipotent God waiting to reveal 
His complete plans for the race until the 
Christian Church shall have won those 
basal, spiritual victories upon which God's 
larger triumphs shall rest. And to this 
thought does Paul appeal, when he asks 
why there should be any baptism for the 
dead, and why the living should stand in 
hourly jeopardy, if there be no resurrec- 
tion. His argument is that all brave as- 
suming of the Christian tasks begun by the 
departed ones is useless, unless we believe 
that these are to live and are to enjoy 
the perfect resurrection life as soon as 
Christ is enabled through the earthly 
victories achieved by His followers to 
come to His promised reign. 

Whatever the disputed phrase, "Bap- 
tized for the dead," may mean exegetically, 
we are surely permitted to interpret it as 
teaching this thought. In being baptized 
for the dead the Christians accepted the 
ritual as an emblem, not merely of death, 
224 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

but also of life. Paul is surely here not 
interpreting baptism in any superstitious 
fashion, nor admitting that one person may 
be baptized vicariously for another. In 
this rite of the Church he saw a deeper 
meaning. It was not only the sign of a 
covenant between the believer and God. 
It was also the public pledge of entrance 
upon the work entrusted by God to the 
Church. By baptism, the convert testified 
not merely to his faith in the Spirit's in- 
dwelling and his death to sin, but also to 
his surrender to the tasks delegated by God 
to the Church for accomplishment. In this 
faith had the departed members of the 
Church been baptized. Like good soldiers 
they had fought valiantly for God's cause. 
Their sublime aspiration had been to make 
the world an abiding place for God. In 
their efforts to eradicate the evils of society 
and to establish righteousness among men 
they had spared no self-sacrifice nor refused 
to undergo any hardship. They were the 
first heroes of the cross. Indeed, to be a 
Christian was synonymous with suffering, 
struggle, fortitude. But always were they 



THE RESURRECTION 

animated with the belief that they were 
winning the world for their Christ. 

But ere the stupendous task was more 
than begun death had overtaken them. 
They had died like soldiers in the ranks 
without seeing the victory. And their very 
death made demands upon others. Their 
tasks they bequeathed to others. Their 
unfinished work entailed responsibility upon 
others who, like re-enforcements from the 
rear, must march up to the front to take 
the place of those who had ever been ani- 
mated by the stirring thought that their 
efforts were hastening the perfect enthrone- 
ment of Christ. The later converts, there- 
fore, through membership in the Church, 
seemed indeed to be baptized for the dead 
when they took up the labors of those who 
had passed on, and when they aided in 
establishing that glorious reign of Christ in 
which, with Him, the departed dead should 
be raised into His resurrection glory. Con- 
sequently their fallen heroes could never 
come to their hoped-for bliss without their 
co-operation. 

Well may Paul ask, then, why the new 
226 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

converts were baptized unless they believed 
the departed are to live forever in Christ's 
coming Kingdom; unless they had assur- 
ance that by their present energetic co- 
operation they are speeding the time when 
"the end" shall come. If the dead rise 
not, there is no reason for enthusiastically 
completing their tasks, since there is never 
to be that larger Kingdom in which Christ 
will gather His own to be with Him forever 
in resurrection glory. 

What tremendous changes would occur 
in the routine Christian life if there were 
no resurrection, is what Paul further argues 
when he asks, "Why stand we in jeopardy 
every hour?" Not by chance had it come 
that the Christian Church was beginning 
to feel the shock of martyrdom. When he 
was baptized the convert well knew that 
he was to enter upon a life of cruellest suf- 
fering, of most ignominious defamation, of 
most painful social ostracism, of most 
bloody persecution. From the world he 
would receive only sneers, jibes, hardship, 
blows, persecution. For him only severest 
privations, heaviest crosses, grossest in- 
227 



THE RESURRECTION 

suits. The moment he made his confession 
of Christ did his sufferings begin. Hourly 
would the evil world hurl its storms upon 
him. . Now he must stand isolated, defense- 
less, friendless. Against him would be 
arrayed a savage, hostile world, ready to 
persecute to the death those who confessed 
allegiance to this crucified Christ. Ere- 
long emperors would illuminate at night 
their pleasure gardens with the pitch- 
covered, burning bodies of those who be- 
lieved that Christ arose from the dead. 
Against them would be proclaimed royal 
edicts of banishment. For them no pro- 
tection by law against ruffianism, vandal- 
ism, insult, atrocious violence. They would 
be accounted but the offscouring of the 
earth! Better to be a cur on the streets 
of Rome than a follower of Christ. Soon 
the white sands of the Coliseum would be 
red with their blood, as starved beasts of 
the jungle feasted upon their despised 
bodies. By the very act of baptism in the 
name of Christ did they submit themselves 
to such fiendish cruelties as the sinful, wild 
world had never before conceived. From 
228 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

this there was no escape. To become a 
Christian was to invite the storm, in all its 
hellish fury, to break upon them. The 
whole world had become a sullen-faced, 
hard-hearted foe, by fiendish oppression en- 
deavoring to uproot the new sect and to 
prevent further allegiance to this Jewish 
Reformer, Jesus. Not an hour when they 
were not in danger. For Paul and his 
fellow-believers life was a daily death. 
New toils, sharper punishments, greater 
sacrifices seemed to be their daily portion. 
Gone for them forever, when they were 
baptized in the name of Christ, peace and 
security and comfort and prosperity. Now 
only tumults, struggles, griefs, burdens, 
woes! So persistent the hardships, so con- 
tinuous the suffering, so incessant the op- 
pression, that life seemed but one long, 
drawn-out, brute's death. Like facing the 
wild beasts of the desert was it to face 
the anger-intoxicated mobs of Ephesus 
and other pagan cities — ever opposing the 
Church, ever measuring out to them burn- 
ing scorn, ever despoiling them of their 
goods, ever harassing them in their business 
229 



THE RESURRECTION 

and home life, ever leading them away to 
die! 

The marvel of history is the loyalty of 
the early Church. With undaunted cour- 
age did they enter into the Christian life. 
Knowing to the last horrible detail what 
confession might mean, they gladly made 
public confession of Christ, and acknowl- 
edged Him their risen Lord. No hardship 
could deter, no suffering could swerve them 
from their giant-hearted allegiance to Him. 
They had a hope. They "knew in whom 
they believed." They were brave followers 
because they trusted their Captain. They 
had a holy, mighty conviction ! Their ear- 
nestness and confidence was the result of 
their creed. They looked beyond this life. 
By faith they could see another life. They 
believed that the dead were raised again as 
Christ was raised again. For those that 
loved Him there would dawn a glorious 
hereafter, so wonderful that in its light all 
earth's shadows would be forgotten; so 
joyous that all of earth's sorrows would 
be annulled. 

Is their hope of an after-life baseless, 
230 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

then their present mode of Christian living 
is abysmal folly. Is there no resurrection 
from the dead, then their life of self-sacri- 
fice and suffering is a gratuitous insanity. 
Unless there is something to come after 
this existence, to which their present strug- 
gles and toils have a holy relation, then 
they are of all men most mad! But grant 
that there is an after-life, then all they do 
and suffer and hope for becomes gloriously 
meaningful! All the amazing practices of 
the Christian life* get their significance 
through the belief in the after-life. It was 
all for a sublime purpose. It was all 
centered around objects that had highest 
importance to God. 

This hope will inspire the Christian to 
most zealous struggles for character. What- 
ever is questionable in its influence upon 
his spiritual welfare, he will willingly sur- 
render for the sake of winning a higher ex- 
istence. Sin will be ruthlessly dealt with 
when the Christian realizes that its conse- 
quences do not terminate with this brief 
life, but project themselves into eternity. 
Holiness assumes sublime proportions, when 
231 



THE RESURRECTION 

he realizes that God prizes it sufficiently to 
give it an endless continuance. By the 
appeal to the endless future is he and all 
the world persuaded to shun sin and to 
pursue righteousness. Against sin, there- 
fore, must the Christian wage war without 
quarter, realizing as he does that the con- 
sequences of sin pertain not merely to this 
life, but to the future also. His eternal 
peace depends upon his holiness — upon the 
overthrow of sin. Confine the results of 
iniquity to just these few fleeting years, and 
the battle against it becomes listless, spas- 
modic, unsuccessful. Realize that sin mars 
a soul that has a future, and the battle 
will become earnest, dogged, never-ending, 
victorious. We can resist the earthward 
gravitations only as we feel the heavenly 
pull. Life is ever in danger of losing its 
seriousness and holiness when we do not 
relate it to eternity. Granting that there 
is but this life, no greater disaster could 
come to us in the living of it than to build 
it on the physical, earthly level, to strive 
for nothing else but that which ministers 
to the body, and to have no regard for 
232 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

the mastery of self and for the rights of 
others. 

Matthew Arnold was right: "Hath man 
no second life? Pitch this one high." But 
the problem ever has been how to pitch it 
high. By what worthy conceptions must 
it be ruled? How can mankind triumph 
over its selfishness? How can the brute 
be trained out of man's nature? How can 
spiritual interests be made supreme? How 
shall the black heathenism in every man's 
nature be transformed into a kingly holi- 
ness? This is the mighty task that has 
ever faced humanity. This has been man- 
kind's despair! 

Paul says there is but one method. 
All history justifies his answer. He finds 
the needed dynamic in the hope of an after- 
life. Without this, mankind as a whole, 
never emerges into a higher civilization 
nor reaches the noblest kind of personal 
character. Does he believe himself but 
a higher kind of a beast, what blame, if he 
lives like a beast and, by prostitution of 
his powers, outdoes the beast in his swine- 
ishness. Then aspiration burns low. Then 
233 



THE RESURRECTION 

discouragement easily defeats him. No 
vast hungers stir him. Having gratified 
self by whatever objectionable means near- 
est at hand, he tries to squeeze joy out of 
his brief life while, all the time, he faces the 
gloomy, unwelcome thought that soon the 
end will come for him. But even while he 
tries thus to live in the sunlight, the un- 
welcome pall overshadows him. Pain, dis- 
asters, antagonism, strife despoil him of his 
peace. The sparkling cup that at first 
he drinks so joyously is filled with bitter 
dregs. The very satisfactions upon which 
the fleeting joy of his life rest are impossible 
to procure. The storms assail when he 
seeks for calm, and he stands bewildered 
in his helplessness. Nature becomes a 
cruel tyrant, first sending balmy breezes, 
then icy tempests. His gladness disap- 
pears. Being without God in the world, 
disasters stun and bewilder and discourage 
him. Life itself becomes a gloomy puzzle, 
when he stands helpless against the savage 
forces of the world. The only boon to 
which he can look is death. Extinction 
he welcomes as his highest blessing. Be- 
234 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

coming at first defiant, he at last is despond- 
ent. Try as he will, the worldling, when 
for an instant he becomes thoughtful, can 
not even "eat and drink and be merry." 
The rich viands stick in the throat; the 
sparkling wine chokes him; his laughter 
turns to sobs. To be merry seems sheer 
mockery when death is so near. 

How does Christianity overcome the 
carnality, the despondency of the world? 
It declares the infinite value of every human 
being. God has vastest thoughts con- 
cerning him. Therefore it is worth while 
to live seriously, heroically; to struggle 
for holiness; to forego the carnal gratifica- 
tion; to surrender the selfish enjoyment; to 
resist all earthly temptations; to live un- 
selfishly, bravely, helpfully, vicariously. 

Self-sacrifice blossoms out of the soil 
of the immortal hope. Slowly but clearly 
the world has learned that self-denial for 
the good of others gleams forth in its beauty 
only on the supposition that our heroic 
struggles bring a glorious harvest. Why 
shall the selfish worldling be expected to do 
anything but "eat and drink and be merry " 
235 



THE RESURRECTION 

if he sees no grandeur in the human beings 
about him, and believes that they were 
made to die? Why should he be expected 
to forego a single particle of personal pleas- 
ure, if to do so would cost him a moment's 
shortening of his own evanescent life, or the 
slightest pang of pain, or the smallest 
hardship? He must think only and ever 
of self and let others do the same, for soon 
the curtain will fall forever for all, and life's 
drama be closed ! He will let others struggle, 
nor stoop to help them; he will hear the sobs 
of anguish from his fellow-men, nor be 
moved to compassion; he will see the suf- 
fering, the distressed, nor offer any succour. 
He will seek his own pleasure and profit, 
even though these be purchased at the 
price of the life-blood of those that are in 
turmoil by his side. 

Paul and his fellow Christians lived for 
others, despite the tremendous price of 
self-sacrifice. Believing in the resurrection 
of Christ, they believed also in the immor- 
tality of those for whose good they strug- 
gled. This hope regulated their entire 
conduct. It animated them to unusual 
236 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

deeds. It was a vindication of their own 
lives, proving them to be actuated by 
sanest motives. Impossible to accuse them 
of falsehood in preaching Christ's survival, 
when they were willing to suffer martyr- 
dom for their belief. Had they consciously 
been heralding a falsehood, how speedily 
they would have desisted when angry op- 
position turned to bitter persecution. Why 
should they place themselves in jeopardy 
and sacrifice all that was dear to them, 
unless they knew themselves to be mes- 
sengers of a truth so transcendent that 
man's highest welfare rested upon it? 
Bad men do not invite suffering. They 
practice deception for some ultimate gain. 
When oppression assails, their defense of 
the deceit ceases. They quickly drop the 
mask and desert the cause which, for per- 
sonal ends, they have been hypocritically 
advocating. 

Only good men, advocating a truth, 
are willing to die for it. And these Chris- 
tians were good men. They wore preaching 
a message never before equalled in signifi- 
cance for mankind. They knew Christ's 
237 



THE RESURRECTION 

resurrection to be a fact. The world needed 
to know it. Bound by wrong religious 
ideas, mankind misinterpreted God and 
misjudged itself. It must have this su- 
preme revelation of the immortal life, at 
whatever cost to the messengers. When 
God had thus spoken through Christ, all 
the world must know what He had said. 
Those who had beheld Him raised again 
were under most solemn and weighty re- 
sponsibility to speed the message. If, in 
heralding it and in establishing themselves 
into a Church to propagate it, they were 
misunderstood, opposed, hated, persecuted, 
then they must heroically pay this price of 
loyalty to God. They must hesitate at 
no hardship, no shame, no punishment; for 
they were doing God's will, and were mak- 
ing a self-sacrifice that would one day bring 
forth glorious harvests in the lives of those 
destined by the good will of God to live 
forever! How preposterous, therefore, to 
suppose that all things that the human 
heart prizes the most — its peace and quiet 
and security and honor and life — they 
would willingly surrender unless they knew 
238 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

that they were God's great truth-bearers. 
Welcome, then, even cruel martyrdom, 
when by their lives God's Kingdom be- 
comes established among priceless men! 
Such a mighty conviction could not but 
have most direct personal bearings upon 
them. From no career of hardship did 
they shrink, being sustained by their un- 
faltering trust in the new life that was to 
come to those who faithfully did God's 
bidding. All manner of sorrow and suffer- 
ing and disgrace they expected for them- 
selves. But they steadfastly believed that 
their present light afflictions were not to be 
compared to the glory that was to be re- 
vealed in them. They could forget all 
else in the joyful anticipation of what God 
had in store for them. Why care for the 
indignities heaped upon them; why grieve 
because life must so speedily end in martyr- 
dom, if God intended to bestow upon 
them all an endless life of bliss? All the 
tumult of their distressed lives they calmly 
accepted as but a part of that vast struggle 
which would finally inaugurate the King- 
dom. Their supreme joy came in knowing 
239 



THE RESURRECTION 

themselves to be eo-workers with God. 
Their heroic devotion was not wasted! 
God would own and crown it. When He 
finally ruled would their crowning joy come, 
in comparison with which the base pleasures 
of sense were as nothing. They would 
see Christ face to face. With their loved 
ones they would be forever in the presence 
of God. This would be the sublime climax 
to their lives of self-sacrificing and loyalty 
and devotion. 



340 



CHAPTER XII 

THE METHOD OF THE RESUR- 
RECTION 



16 



God is doing every day as wonderful things as 
the things implied in the belief in the resurrection 
of the dead, and if He says there shall be a resur- 
rection, there shall be, for there is nothing to hinder 
it. — Gregg. 

With the brain, the person himself disappears, 
and we say he is dead. But close observation 
teaches us that appearances are not to be trusted. 
The severing of the tie, however intimate, between 
mind and brain, flesh and spirit, involves only the 
disruption of the instrument, not the extinction 
of the agent. The person may find or construct 
another spiritual instrument that will serve him 
even better. — Buckham. 

The body of Benjamin Franklin (like the cover 
of an old book, its contents torn out, and stripped 
of its leather and gilding) lies here — food for worms; 
yet the work itself shall not be lost, for it will, as 
he believes, appear once more in a new and more 
beautiful edition, corrected and amended by the 
Author. — Franklin's epitaph, written by himself. 

The bedrock of the universe is the faithfulness 
of God, the foundation of all is the integrity of our 
Maker; and at our being's height we can do no 
other and no better than ground our trust upon the 
immutable promise confirmed by the oath of Him 
that can not lie, and thus rest our hope of the life 
after death upon the truth of Christ and the honor 
of God. — Gordon. 



CHAPTER XII 

The Method of the Resurrection 

But some man will say, How are the dead 
raised up? and with what body do they come? 
Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, 
except it die. And that which thou sowest, thou 
sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it 
may chance of wheat, or of some other grain: But 
God giveth it a body as it hath pleased Him, and 
to every seed His own body. All flesh is not the 
same flesh: but there is one kind of flesh of men, 
another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and 
another of birds. There are also celestial bodies, 
and bodies terrestrial : but the glory of the celestial 
is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another. 
There is one glory of the sun, and another glory 
of the moon, and another glory of the stars : for one 
star differeth from another star in glory. — Verses 
35-41. 

Paul reaches now another part in his great 
argument. Having proven upon an histor- 
ical basis the resurrection of Christ, he goes 
243 



THE RESURRECTION 

on to strengthen faith in this incontrovert- 
ible fact by pointing out the tremendous 
incredibilities and pitiful absurdities into 
which the denial plunges the doubter. By 
so doing Paul demonstrates that Christ's 
survival was not an isolated, chance event 
in the history of humanity. It was a pre- 
determined illustration of the supreme law 
under which the whole race had its existence. 
Through Christ God has shown what is 
His righteous purpose for all of His obedient 
children. To have faith, then, in man's 
resurrection was a most reasonable con- 
viction. Through this faith there was to 
be for all followers of Christ a spiritual 
awakening into righteousness, and a whole- 
hearted departure from sin. 

But a further task awaited Paul. The 
method of the resurrection puzzled and be- 
wildered many. It was necessary that 
he should endeavor to answer the persistent 
questions which troubled those earnest, 
inquiring minds who, being unable to deny 
the fact of Christ's survival, needed to be 
taught how the resurrection fitted itself 
into God's vast system of things. 
244 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

Nor must we fail to realize that in all 
of this remarkable chapter Paul is arguing 
not merely for a future life, but for the res- 
urrection. He did not believe merely in a 
survival of the spirit, such as was taught 
by some of the Jewish and Grecian schools, 
but in an existence where man had a bodily 
form. Paul was not contented with the 
thought of a shadowy Hades or of a gloomy 
Sheol, in which mystic, ghostly, disem- 
bodied spirits had their unsatisfactory ex- 
istence. To him this was not life at all, 
but imprisonment. He could not believe 
that to such an existence God would call 
His own after the earthly life. If there 
was here on earth some mystical union be- 
tween spirit and body, so in the life to come 
God would not continue man's spirit in a 
gloomy, cheerless, unclothed fashion. The 
spirit would have again its dwelling-place 
in a body. When death touched the hu- 
man frame man did not become a bodiless, 
elusive phantom. So intimate was the 
relation between the two, that in the future 
as in the present there must be some 
fundamental connection between the spirit 
245 



THE RESURRECTION 

and a body, even though in a form changed 
utterly from that which had characterized 
the earthly existence. Just as the body 
now is the instrument for the manifestation 
of the spirit, so must there be some kind 
of a heavenly body through which the spirit 
expresses itself. And over both sides of 
human nature God must be recognized as 
having omnipotent sway. 

No greater service could the mighty- 
brained Paul do for anxious mankind than 
to make clear that the resurrection does not 
go counter to known facts of the universe, 
and that the facts already accepted per- 
mit us to welcome as truthful this new 
belief in the resurrection. The revelation 
goes counter to nothing already held as 
fundamental in the religious life. Indeed, 
this is the climax revelation. If it can be 
shown that there are in nature foregleams 
of immortality, then the implicit belief in 
the survival of man becomes increasingly 
easy. It will be recognized not as an im- 
possibility, contradicting all of God's known 
methods of procedure. The resurrection 
is in accordance with the very laws accord- 
246 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

ng to which the universe operates now 
before our very eyes. Can it be shown that 
now under our every-day observation there 
are occurring creationary processes, analo- 
gous to that which transpired in the resur- 
rection of Christ, then belief has at least 
been made easier, and faith can not be 
accounted blind credulity. To be sure, it 
must not be expected that an analogy con- 
stitutes an all-sufficient proof; but it does 
mightily corroborate our faith. It clears 
away forever some flippant objections and 
makes forever impossible some bold de- 
nials. The more abundant these universal 
analogies, the less likely will it be for a 
fair-minded objector to deny that the phys- 
ical and the spiritual are bound together 
in some such mystic way that the physical 
facts of nature foretoken the spiritual facts. 
What occurs in the one realm may be taken 
as a hint of what is possible in the other, 
unless there is definite proof to the con- 
trary. 

How there could be a resurrection the 
Corinthian doubter could not understand. 
He raised a double objection to it. It 
247 



THE RESURRECTION 

seemed both impossible and incredible. 
Having witnessed the body's disintegration 
after death, and its dissolution into dust, 
he could not but ask, "How are the dead 
raised and with what body do they come?" 
Cramped by his narrow views concerning 
God, he questioned the possibility of any 
power sufficient to bring the human being 
into life again. Controlled by crudest ma- 
terialistic notions as to what matter was, 
he questioned its fitness in any shape for 
participation in man's future life. 

To these difficulties Paul makes con- 
vincing reply. He declares how the resur- 
rection is possible and shows what kind 
of a bodily form is to come to man's spirit 
in the other world. In the eyes of the 
apostle, the doubter seems but a pitiful 
fool, inasmuch as in the very world about 
him God has given hints and glimpses of 
the method by which He is always operating 
to maintain the world and by which He 
will also bring the obedient human being 
into a perfect resurrection. To these Paul 
makes his convincing appeal. The doubt 
is answered now by nature itself. It is 
248 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

rankest folly to assert the impossibility of 
anything because the entire method of its 
creation can not be comprehended. Na- 
ture's analogies must be our teachers. 

The life-story of the grain of wheat gives 
us the first clue as to our resurrection. When 
the kernel is planted, a mighty transforma- 
tion occurs. It withers. It is destroyed. 
Its parts dissolve. A corruption and decay 
seize upon it. The bonds holding the grain 
together are broken. Its entire nature is 
altered. But despite the transformation 
and the disintegration, there is no anni- 
hilation. There is something that survives. 
At the same time that there is a destruc- 
tion, there is a quickening also. The 
elements that, under the hard, external 
coat appeared changeless, are rearranged; 
they are transformed into a new existence, 
more wonderful and beautiful than the old. 
But its identity has not altered. It per- 
sists in a higher form. From the decaying 
seed there have shot out the delicate root- 
lets, sucking nourishment from the soil, 
and the sturdy stalk reaching out toward 
light and moisture and warmth. Its life 
249 



THE RESURRECTION 

is continued despite its apparent death. 
The reign of decay was not final. There 
was a higher response within its own mystic 
elements to the call of the fertile soil and 
the balmy air. The greater glory of the 
seed could not have come without the 
initial decomposition. The quickening was 
inevitable because of the latent powers of 
the seed deposited there by God. It had 
inherent life, and nothing could annul it. 
It must decrease in order to increase into 
the living plant. Springing from the old 
seed it has amazing power of maintaining 
itself. Whatever it needs for its suste- 
nance it has strength to appropriate out of 
soil and air. Its seeming death and decay 
were but episodes in its process of glorifica- 
tion. By its decay began its higher life. 
In its original state its latent powers were 
unrecognized. 

Nor does Paul fail to assert that the 
seed's new body is created through the 
power of God. Its perfected existence is 
not left to haphazard. Its material sub- 
stance is regulated by God's will. Under 
His laws does it have its being. "He 
250 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

giveth it a body even as it pleaseth Him." 
Its new life is related to the divine creation- 
ary purpose just as much as its life in the 
seed was. Its body is a direct gift from 
Him. Its form, its qualities depend upon 
what He decides for it. What His wisdom 
determines for it, that comes to pass, and 
against His will nothing can prevail. The 
moldering grain bursts into the green 
plant because the Omnipotent One is in 
the mysterious process. Just so does the 
seed in its higher existence have qualities 
befitting its individual character. Between 
the second body and the first there is a 
suitable correspondence. "To each seed 
a body of its own" is [nature's law. The 
future bodies will vary according to the 
distinctive inner qualities of each kind and 
variety. The quality of the present seed- 
body will determine the quality of the future 
plant body, so that in a most fundamental 
sense the new structure may be called its 
own, because it came out of something 
latent within the first form that rigorously 
determines the later form. 

So with man's body. His death is but 
251 



THE RESURRECTION 

the condition to a larger life. Dissolution 
may come to the material elements. De- 
cay may carry on its gruesome work. 
The body may crumble into dust, or be 
burned into cinders, or change into mold 
by corruption. But as the grain has the 
possibility of renewal, so has man's life. 
Out of his body will spring up a higher 
existence. There will come the transfor- 
mation to the mature, perfect form. There 
must be a transfigured body, related to 
the old, as the stalk of wheat is related 
to the disintegrated kernel. And as the 
seed has its new body bestowed upon it 
by the power of God according to His 
preconceived purpose, so will the same 
Omnipotent God give man a higher bodily 
existence. The transfiguration will not de- 
pend upon any human, material agencies, 
but upon the ever- working will of God. 
He will bring the resurrection body to its 
perfection. And this will have its suitable 
correspondence to the former body of man. 
Individual identity will not be destroyed. 
Being related by the wisdom of God to the 
former self, the individuality will be pre- 
252 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

served. Death can not, therefore, extin- 
guish man's personality, even though it may 
smite his earthly body/ So majestic is the 
union between the spirit and God's mysteri- 
ous world of matter that, through the gift 
of God, a new body can be created by the 
spirit to become its instrument under more 
exalted circumstances than the earthly. 

In order to prevent a narrow conception 
of God's power in creation, and to show 
how utterly foolish it is for men to question 
the possibility of the resurrection, Paul 
uses a second analogy. He emphasizes the 
boundlessness of God's power in the uni- 
verse. He is not limited in the creatures 
of His will. He has called into being count- 
less existences — all differing fundamentally 
in quality and construction. "All flesh is 
not the same flesh." One variety of living 
things differs from another in its char- 
acteristics. God does not confine Himself 
to one variety. There is an infinity of 
bodily form. He has made the flesh of 
man and beast and bird and fish. No two 
are alike. One differs from another ac- 
cording to the sphere in which God pur- 
253 



THE RESURRECTION 

poses it to move. It conforms to the 
element in which it is to have its existence. 
He has more than one form of physical 
creature. So radically different are they, 
one from the other, that to a creature of 
a lower order the creature of the higher 
order would seem an impossibility. Only 
by experience could it discover that there 
are beings transcending it in rank, but still 
receiving the gift of life from God as it does. 
God did not limit His works to man. He 
made the hosts of the animals that crawl 
and walk and fly and swim. They live in a 
mysterious fashion that completely tran- 
scends the expectation of man. They exist 
under circumstances wherein man would 
find life impossible. Their existence seems 
to contradict all of his knowledge and to 
surpass all of his expectation. He can 
reconcile them to his limited sphere of 
being only by acknowledging that God 
has created them in His infinite wisdom. 
And from the standpoint of any single order 
of living beings it might be incredible to 
believe in creatures of a higher or lower 
rank. Yet here they are before us in count- 
254 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

less abundance. They prove the bound- 
lessness of God's power. He can create 
the human being that stands erect. He 
makes the massive elephant that walks, 
the tiny humming-bird that flies, the giant 
boaconstrictor that crawls, the tiny insect 
that flits on light wing, the mighty whale 
and the whirling mite that swim in the 
clear waters. For earth and sky and 
rivers and oceans He has called into being 
the myriads of living things according to 
the plenitude of His powers, conforming 
their bodies to the element in which they 
are to move. For the fleeting, timid deer, 
slender legs; for the gull, buoyant, feathery 
wings ; for the denizens of the deep, gills and 
air-sacks and scales. God has operated 
beyond our expectation and past our im- 
agination, because He is the All-powerful 
One! 

If He has done so marvelously here in 
the realm of the natural world, who dare 
deny that He can fashion a higher grade of 
body for man's spirit, and give to man a 
form befitting the altered circumstances 
under which His love will permit man to 
255 



THE RESURRECTION 

live? In the face of the miraculous variety 
of bodily organisms here upon earth, to say 
that God can have but one bodily form 
for man, or that no higher form can come 
to him after death, betokens a recklessness 
and an ignorance against which every 
humble-spirited, reasonable man must un- 
ceasingly protest. 

Lest this analogy might not have proven 
his point to his questioners, Paul bids them 
lift their eyes to the heavens. There 
shine the countless orbs of light as they 
silently move on their fiery pathways 
guided by the hand of God. They differ 
from one another. "There is one glory 
of the sun, and another glory of the 
stars." To make this point Paul did not 
need to be versed in modern astronomy, 
that by means of telescopes and spectrum 
analyses concerns itself with stellar at- 
mospheres and chemical compounds and 
vast orbits. He knew that there was a 
difference between the celestial and the 
terrestrial, but that God was the Creator 
of both of them. Between earth in all of 
its sublime powers and the flaming planets 
256 






PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

there was little similarity. God's power 
could fashion both grades of physical ex- 
istences. In the amazing multitudes of the 
starry hosts God forever silences the ques- 
tion as to the possibility of His doing what- 
ever He will. Those silent sentinels of the 
sky — they differ from each other in light, 
in chemical constituents, in size, in orbit 
of pilgrimage, in length of life, yet God 
made them all in their wondrous diversity. 
Seeing then the difference between the 
terrestrial and the celestial, beholding the 
infinite gradations of glory among the 
heavenly bodies, what human being with 
so much affrontery and impiety as to declare 
that in the creation of an earthly body 
God has exhausted His resources for man, 
and that He can do nothing for His children 
except that which He has done in creating 
a body that is earthly and subject to death 
and decay! He who denies God's power 
to endow man with another body, "as it 
pleaseth Him," is cramped in vision, stunted 
in imagination, crushed in faith, limited 
in reason, unspiritual in nature, reckless 
in infidelity. 

17 257 



THE RESURRECTION 

The various analogies upon which Paul 
bases his compelling argument may not be 
conclusive in favor of the resurrection, but 
they do incontrovertibly demonstrate the 
possibility of a bodily resurrection after 
death. From all that we see in the phys- 
ical world about us and above us, we are 
warranted in concluding that after this 
body, created by God subject to death and 
decay, God can give in His strong, fatherly 
goodness another existence where purified 
spirit shall be joined to glorified body. 

And never was Paul's irrefutable logic 
at this point needed more than to-day. 
That blatant dogmatism of some present- 
day physical investigators is not worthy 
the name of science which, out of the 
myriad, incomprehensible wonders of the 
mysterious universe, has not learned with 
reverent awe to speak the name of God 
and to ascribe all power to Him! To the 
man who has most intelligently and rever- 
ently travelled the fields with the geologist, 
or mused in the laboratory with the biolo- 
gist, or wonderingly gazed out at the 
unmeasured heavens through the astron- 
258 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

omer's telescope, or pondered upon the 
problems of the psychologist, it is not an 
incredible thing that God should raise the 
dead, nor that our All-powerful Father 
should give the resurrection life to His 
children. 



259 



CHAPTER XIII 
THE RESURRECTION BODY 



In former times it was commonly thought neces- 
sary to affirm a material identity between the future 
body and that of the present. But Paul, while he 
intimates that there is some bond of connection 
between the one and the other, is far from affirm- 
ing a material identity. In reconstituting man's 
physical being, material identity is of no conse- 
quence whatever. — Sheldon. 

Christ never speaks in terms of an Essene or 
Hellenic immortality of soul. His words make 
it clear that in harmony with the Old Testament 
conception of man and life, He does not think of a 
purely incorporeal existence as real life in man's 
case. He points to the relation between God and 
man as guaranteeing the continued life of the latter, 
and that in his entire self, not in a part of his 
personal being. 

If ever there was a man whose goading ex- 
periences, keen intellectual energies, and moral 
sensibilities, made him weary of this slow, gross 
body, and passionately to long for a more corre- 
sponding, swift, and pure investiture, it was Paul. 
— Alger. 



CHAPTER XIII 
The Resurrection Body 

So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is 
sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption : 
It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory: it is 
sown in weakness; it is raised in power: it is sown 
a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There 
is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. — 
Verses 4-2-^4* 

What the character of the resurrection 
body is Paul makes it his task to tell. He 
has shown that the mysterious processes 
of nature about us prepare for a belief in 
the resurrection. Like to the change that 
comes to the seed as it develops into the 
stalk, is the transformation from the phys- 
ical, mortal body to the spiritual, heavenly 
body. He has answered the charge that 
a resurrection is impossible. It is a gra- 
tuitous folly to suspect that the God who 
built the first human body with all of its in- 
263 



THE RESURRECTION 

comprehensible mysteries can not fashion 
another body. When man's spirit comes 
into its new form this will be adapted to 
the new surroundings to which it is to be 
related, and will differ from the first body 
as one star differs from another. It will 
be conformable to the new heavens in which 
dwelleth righteousness. But despite the 
significant difference between the two bod- 
ies, there will be some fundamental identity 
in personality so that our individuality will 
never be lost. The new body will represent 
us as we really are spiritually. Between 
the man's inner personality and his out- 
ward body there will be most exact cor- 
respondence, and despite all the changes 
incident upon the development of the heav- 
enly body his identity will not be lost. 
For God operates according to a fixed law. 
As seed brings forth stalk after its kind, so 
shall like produce like as regards the spirit's 
new instrument. There shall be the power 
of persistence in the change from earthly 
to heavenly, as there is now in this earthly 
body, when despite the changes so frequent 
that every seven years there is a complete 
264 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

atomic transformation there is an identity 
throughout all the difference. As a river 
maintains itself throughout its fluctuations, 
so shall the personality maintain itself 
through the change of death. In some 
high and mysterious sense will the resur- 
rection body be related to this earthly one. 
The fact that Paul can not tell how the 
process occurs, does not any more invali- 
date his argument than that the reality 
of the ever-changing physical body is in- 
validated, because doctor or psychologist 
can not explain how the purely physical 
processes occur. How puerile, therefore, 
the loud-voiced, modern doubter who sneer- 
ingly asks which of man's several bodies 
really rises, and who protests against the 
possibility of a resurrection because for 
all the hosts of the dead there would not 
be enough phosphorous for every one! 

But for some of these doubts so com- 
mon throughout the history of Christian- 
ity the Church itself is to blame. Forget- 
ting the inspired teaching of Paul it has 
pitifully misconstrued the significance of 
the resurrection, falsely claiming that the 
265 



THE RESURRECTION 

identical body that was laid in the grave 
and which moldered into dust would be 
restored again. Well might there be a 
protest against this narrow interpretation 
of the resurrection. One conclusive argu- 
ment against it ought to be that on this 
theory there would be no escape from the 
physical deformities and irregularities that 
marked the earthly human body. Incon- 
ceivable it is to believe that the deformed 
bodies fashioned imperfectly according to 
the laws of heredity or crippled by accident 
should be expected to survive forever. 
But in such a resurrection no Christian 
need believe. Indeed, there is no Scriptural 
warrant for so believing that may not be 
reinterpreted in the light of Paul's teachings 
contained in this chapter. We rise above 
all such materialistic errors by meditating 
upon Paul's spiritual interpretations of 
the resurrection. 

Nor can we be dissuaded from this con- 
clusion by the appeal to the resurrection 
body of Christ. It is true that His body 
that was laid into the tomb was also mi- 
raculously raised; that He spoke of "My 
266 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

flesh and bones;" that He bore the marks of 
the crucifixion upon His body; that He ate 
with His disciples. But some other facts 
must not be lost sight of. Christ's body 
did not suffer complete decay as does that 
of humanity in general. His death and 
burial and resurrection were not of ordi- 
nary significance. God did not treat His 
own Son in any general way in His resur- 
rection. God accommodated Himself to 
the needs of the disciples and the world. 
The disciples of Christ could never have 
been persuaded of His resurrection unless 
the grave had been emptied by God; unless 
Christ, the dead Master, had become also 
the risen Lord; unless they could definitely, 
accurately trace the identity between Him 
that was dead and Him that was alive, 
by the very bodily resemblances. Christ 
needed during those forty days previous 
to His ascension to conform to earthly con- 
ditions and to all the laws of the senses, 
otherwise the disciples would never have 
known indisputably that He had surely 
arisen. He needed not to eat food to main- 
tain His physical life. He partook of it, 
267 



THE RESURRECTION 

as some one has said, "to prove to these 
doubting ones His identity and the reality 
of His human nature." Had these phys- 
ical proofs been lacking that were on the 
plane of the physical sense-life of the 
disciples, they had never been persuaded 
that they were not believing in phantoms. 
God gave these physical proofs to them 
and to all the world because, without them, 
there could never have been established 
irrefutably the belief that His life con- 
tinued after death. 

The disciples themselves well realized 
that the resurrection body of Christ was 
something more than that body which He 
had before death. It had higher powers 
beyond those of nature as they were ac- 
customed to see it. He was no longer sub- 
ject to the physical laws governing general 
mankind. He could mysteriously appear 
and disappear. He was generally invisible. 
He seemed above ordinary physical limi- 
tations. As Simpson states, "Christ's glo- 
rified human body habitually dwelling in 
non-terrestrial conditions temporarily re- 
assumes the human outline and frame and 
268 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

former appearance and marks of the 
wounds for evidential and instructive pur- 
pose." His new body was endowed with 
higher capacities beyond the power of his 
disciples to comprehend. Nor has the 
modern world fathomed its secret. Of this 
only are we certain. There was an ab- 
solute spiritual identity between the Christ 
who arose and the Christ who had 
formerly lived and was crucified; but His 
second body was fundamentally different 
from His pre-resurrection body. As if God 
had formed the first body insufficient for the 
new spiritual existence, He had endowed 
Christ with another bodily instrument 
through which the spirit was to operate. 
Paul's conclusions are not, therefore, 
in contradiction to the example of Christ. 
Indeed, Christ illustrated, as far as it was 
possible for Him to do to men still by 
necessity under the limitations of the 
physical senses, that the resurrection body 
is a glorified one. The Gospel writers 
record the instances of the " Re-entrance 
of the glorified body of Christ into terrestrial 
conditions." Paul, as a Christian theo- 
269 



THE RESURRECTION 

logian, attempts the explanation of the 
risen body to which faith in Christ makes 
us heir. It corresponds to its new environ- 
ment. It is commensurate to the spiritual 
demands made upon it. That it is a glori- 
fied body — the new abode and helper of 
the spirit under heavenly conditions — is 
Paul's conclusion. As is the new larger 
life of the plant developed from the de- 
cayed seed, so is the resurrection of the 
dead out of the physical body. Only in the 
resurrection life can there be that glorified 
body with which the spirit, acting under 
God's laws, can clothe itself. Did the 
spirit have powers, by the will of God, to 
build a material organ through which it 
could function, just so will the same spirit, 
by its divinely-bestowed, vital powers, con- 
struct another bodily organization for it- 
self. Like a tent in which the pilgrim for 
the few nights of his journey finds protec- 
tion, so is the body. But when this frail 
structure is levelled low by the power of 
death, God will give to the undying spirit 
another house not made with hands, eternal 
in the heavens. 

270 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

The strategic difference between the 
two kinds of bodies Paul portrays in ma- 
jestic language. The two are essentially 
unlike. Their characteristic qualities are 
radically different. One is natural; the 
other is spiritual. One is adapted to this 
earthly system of material things appre- 
hended through the senses. It is suitable 
to an earthly existence. It fits into an 
ever-changing material world. It is a sens- 
uous body! It is not above nature. It is 
one of nature's facts; has existence under 
its laws; is amenable to its principles; must 
conform to its dictates; is controlled by all 
the physical realities among which man 
stands as one of its elements. 

But there is another side to man's 
human nature. There is that within him 
which is above the physical. It is subject 
to higher laws. It is suitable to a new en- 
vironment. It is free from all narrow, ma- 
terial limitations. It is qualified to survive 
in more than earthly circumstances. It is 
linked to the supersensuous. It is com- 
pletely adapted to an eternal world. This 
is man's spirit. And by power given to it 
271 



THE RESURRECTION 

by God, man's spirit shall fashion a body 
suitable to itself when God calls it into its 
higher life. For the spirit of man must 
some day have its glorified body. 

Paul strikingly contrasts the two bodies. 
One is subject to corruption. It can not 
escape death. It is mortal. It has no 
permanent power of defending itself against 
overthrow. Its strength is limited. Its 
power of relating itself to the nourishing 
ministrations of nature diminishes and 
ceases. As soon as it is buried the process 
of decay attacks it, and soon disintegration 
utterly destroys the erstwhile noble form. 
It is but dust! Against it is spoken the 
decree of ruin. The beauty of its shape, 
the attractiveness of its delicately-fashioned 
parts, the winsomeness of its colors — all 
these depart. Destroyed are all those 
charms and powers that made it God's 
physical masterpiece. It is "sown in dis- 
honor." Being of lowly origin, it can escape 
no kind of humiliation. Being stripped 
of all the honor it had as a physical machine, 
it suffers the final dishonor of dissolution 
and disappears at last utterly from view. 
272 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

What once stirred our admiration now has 
vanished. Its beauty and glory have 
changed into the pitiful handful of dust 
that can be scattered by the wind, or that 
nourishes the lowly grass. It is "sown in 
weakness." How narrow are the limits of 
man's physical strength throughout his 
earthly life! Sickness despoils it of its 
power. Labor causes depressing fatigue. 
Pain plays its misereres upon muscle and 
nerve and sinew and bone. Its frailty will 
prevent any long burden-bearing. Soon 
does it wear out. Gray hairs and deep-cut 
wrinkles and stooped shoulders and un- 
steady gait tell that pitiful old age is de- 
manding toll from the defenseless body. 
The most trivial accident smites it to 
earth, or leaves it crippled. With ceaseless, 
wearisome drudgery must it be nourished 
and protected. Never-ending is the toil 
of safeguarding it against ever-attacking 
diseases. It is a prey to a thousand ills 
and pains. It collapses under its burdens. 
The hot rays of the friendly sun dazzles 
and kills; the wintry blast congeals and 

petrifies. Its powers disappear as does 
is 273 



THE RESURRECTION 

perfume from the fading lily, and leaves it 
burdensome, useless. Like a shattered harp 
with broken strings its music is lost. Its 
senses — those beautiful windows through 
which the soul looks out upon God's won- 
drous world — are darkened. Deafness, 
blindness fall like pall of midnight upon it. 
Ever is it impotent servant to the spirit. 
The soul dreams, but the body can not carry 
out its high visions. The mind goes on its 
long, holy pilgrimages, but the heavy body 
toils like a slow-moving snail. It is linked 
to earth. Ever it is under the dominance 
of its lowly origin, and bound and shackled 
by its multitudinous limitations. 

But not so the spiritual body. As Simp- 
son says: "Its formative principle is the 
spirit which is heart of the intellectual, 
moral, and spiritual life of man. It is the 
self's perfected expression." As the living 
stalk rises into a majestically different exist- 
ence than that which characterizes the decay- 
ing seed, so must the spiritual transcend the 
natural body. It will be in accord with its 
heavenly environment. It is a real body. 
But it is in "entire subordination to the 
274 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

purposes of the spirit." Earthly limitations 
no longer hinder it, nor earthly laws bind 
it, nor earthly necessities hamper it. Death 
and decay can not touch it. Its graces 
and glories are permanent. Nothing can 
interfere with its beauty and strength, nor 
bring it into easy subjection. It is touched 
with glory and adorned with qualities of 
majesty. Being of spiritual, not soul origin, 
it partakes of the high qualities of its crea- 
tionary cause. No longer is it subject to 
humiliation, nor liable to overthrow, nor 
open to sickness, nor dependent upon phys- 
ical nourishment, nor assailable by inimical 
forces. God has made it amazingly richer 
than this poor earthly body. Gone are all 
the marks of baseness that characterized 
man's first body. It is endowed with 
powers beyond our ability to comprehend. 
It triumphs over change and decay and dis- 
solution. Sickness and suffering and frailty 
and fatigue and collapse never harass it. 
It is meet companion for the spirit, able 
to execute its high behests, to express its 
subtlest thoughts, and to minister to its 
most exalted aspirations. No longer is it 
275 



THE RESURRECTION 

a clog upon the spirit. It is adapted to the 
unseen world. It has powers of movement 
and endurance and achievement, utterly 
unhampered by the physical hindrances 
that marked the lowly, earthly body. As 
to what it would be, Christ foregleamed 
in those mysterious hours after resurrec- 
tion, when He so completely transcended 
all physical, material laws, and thereby 
hinted at what the true spiritual body 
would be when He reigned with God. 

Nor did Paul believe that this mighty 
transition from the body that perishes to 
the body that survives in glory and in- 
corruption and power was a haphazard oc- 
currence. The process based itself upon 
the vast underlying principle by which 
God is ever operating in the world. Every- 
where in the universe there is written the 
law of progress. From the lesser, God 
brings into expression the greater; from the 
simple, the complex; from the partial, the 
complete. Always He is working toward 
the perfect, transforming His material un- 
til from glory to glory it can take the im- 
press of His exalted thoughts, and be com- 
276 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

plete in His sight. Never was the noble 
conception clearer and more convincing 
than in this day, when all minds are thrilled 
by the idea of the evolutionary process. 
God moves by orderly marches of His 
creationary power from primeval chaos 
to sublime cosmos; from whirling fire-mist 
to beaming stars and flaming suns; from 
humble grass to towering redwood; from 
lowly protozoa to highly organized mam- 
malia; from simple sensations and mys- 
terious instincts to intelligence and love. 
In obedience to this majestic principle 
does man's spirit clothe itself with its new 
body. The law of progress holds for it. 
God does not endow man at first with the 
highest kind of body. First, He creates 
the lower body that has but an animal ex- 
istence with its appetites and tendencies 
and limitations and needs. Here the spirit 
must be at home for a little while under 
physical circumstances in order that it may 
be trained and disciplined and cultured 
for a higher existence that is to dawn after 
death. Then will the spirit have its per- 
fect body. We can not have it now be- 
277 



THE RESURRECTION 

cause we are not ready for it. We are not 
strong enough in spiritual maturity. The 
first "lowly estate of man" is the necessary 
precondition to man's spiritual develop- 
ment. But when man's spirit has been 
disciplined by all earthly experiences and 
become amenable to the purposes of God, 
then can the Creator's perfect will have its 
way with His children, and He can bestow 
the body, incorruptible and glorified. Then 
will the spirit of man have its perfect, 
heavenly instrument. 

We need not be surprised, then, that 
in this existence God does not give to man 
his glorified, heavenly, immortal body. 
He must grow into such spiritual likeness 
to God, that immortality is his high reward. 
He must develop into this as does the green 
living plant grow from the seed. First 
must come that part of existence where, 
under lowly circumstances that tutor the 
spirit and arouse it to eternal truths, he 
learns by all human experiences to trust 
and love God. Then is man ready for the 
eternal existence where his spirit shall be 
endowed with a body sublime enough to be 
278 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

suitable companion to his spirit in heavenly 
realms. Only then has God completed 
His far-reaching plans for His own, when 
the earthly body is superseded by the 
heavenly, when out of the insufficiency and 
partialness and corruption and dishonor of 
the earthly body man rises, spiritually re- 
generated, into the grandeur of his celestial 
body incorruptible and immortal. 



279 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE EARTHLY AND THE 
HEAVENLY 



This body is my house — it is not I; 

Herein I sojourn till, in some far sky, 

I lease a fairer dwelling, built to last 

Till all the carpentry of time is past. 

When from my high place viewing this lone star, 

What shall I care where these poor timbers are? 

What though the crumbling walls turn dust and 

loam — 
I shall have left them for a larger home! 
What though the rafters break, the stanchions rot, 
When earth has dwindled to a glimmering spot! 
When thou, clay cottage, fallest, I'll immerse 
My long-cramped spirit in the universe. 
Through uncomputed silences of space 
I shall yearn upward to the leaning Face. 
The ancient heavens will roll aside for me, 
As Moses monarch'd the dividing sea. 
This body is my house — it is not I; 
Triumphant in this faith I live, and die. 

— Frederick L. Knowles. 

There is an advance in man, and not under- 
standing what belongs to the Spirit of God, he 
reaches eventually to the stage of existence made 
a spiritual being. — Origen. 

Nature strives to keep what it has gained of 
worth. Fulfillment is first principle of natural 
theology, as it is of Christian divinity. Christ 
declared this to be the primal law and essential 
truth of all God's working, not to destroy, but to 
fulfill.— Smyth. 



CHAPTER XIV 

The Earthly and the Heavenly 

And so it is written, The first man Adam was 
made a living soul; the last Adam was made a 
quickening spirit. Howbeit that was not first 
which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and 
afterward that which is spiritual. The first man 
is of the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord 
from heaven. As is the earthy, such are they 
also that are earthy; and as is the heavenly, such 
are they also that are heavenly. And as we have 
borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear 
the image of the heavenly. Now this I say, breth- 
ren, that flesh and blood can not inherit the King- 
dom of God; neither doth corruption inherit in- 
corruption. Behold, I show you a mystery; we 
shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 
in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the 
last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the 
dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be 
changed. For this corruptible must put on in- 
corruption, and this mortal must put on immortal- 
ity. — Verses £.5-53. 

283 



THE RESURRECTION 

What the divine plan is concerning the 
resurrection of man, Paul further illustrates 
by the contrast that he draws again be- 
tween Adam and Christ. He has just 
pointed out that because there is a sensuous 
or psychical body, there must also be a 
spiritual body; for God is always working 
from the lower to the higher, according to 
the ever-present law of progress. The 
body of Adam illustrated in what way the 
living soul, as the first life-force, could 
house itself through the power of God. 
The glorified body of Christ is typical of the 
exalted form with which the children of 
Christ are to be endowed. For between 
Adam and Christ there is a strategic dif- 
ference. Adam, fashioned on earth, be- 
came a "living soul." He had life, but life 
under certain limitations, sustained by con- 
formity to his own peculiar environment. 
The endowment of his body was limited; 
its possibilities narrow; its capacities mea- 
ger; its range of activities circumscribed. 
It was made only for earth. It is subject 
to it in all things, great and small. It is 
consequently doomed to destruction. 
284 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

When Adam becomes, therefore, ac- 
cording to the laws that control the trans- 
mission of life, the progenitor to a race of 
men, he can impart to his offspring only 
what he is. The stream can not rise above 
its source. By heredity they must share 
in his very nature, and partake of his most 
humiliating limitations. Was he subject 
to the forces of physical deterioration and 
age and death? Then there could be no 
escape from the same experiences for those 
who are dependent upon him for their 
origin. Every physical disaster that befell 
him must be the lot of those that follow. 
There could be no release, consequently, 
from the law of death, until some higher life- 
force than that which ruled over Adam 
came into expression in the race, and a new 
progenitor was established in the realm of 
the spirit as unswervingly as Adam is in 
the realm of the body. He must be able 
to impart spiritual life just as Adam im- 
parts physical life. He must be possessed 
of a distinct spiritual force that differen- 
tiates him from the humble Adam. 

Such a progenitor was Christ. That He 
285 



THE RESURRECTION 

majestically possessed this higher spiritual 
power, He demonstrated by His resurrec- 
tion from the dead. He proved Himself 
possessed of a strength capable of de- 
stroying utterly the dominance of death, 
and of building a glorified body not subject 
to earthly conditions except as He so de- 
sired. If, then, by sharing in Adam's life 
principle we partook of his mortality, by 
sharing in Christ's spiritual nature we are 
made heir also of His triumphs. As Adam 
imparts a physical existence, so does Christ 
impart His life-giving principle to His 
obedient children. He was the new life 
generator. He is progenitor of a new 
race. Union with Him by faith and love 
makes humanity heirs with Him of the 
glorified body and of the heavenly exist- 
ence that were His after His resurrection 
and ascension. He is the "Quickening 
Spirit." Through Him we rise into the 
higher life. 

Christ is thus the "last Adam," be- 
cause He stands as the originator of a new 
order of humanity. We see ourselves fully 
not in our first parent, but in Him. We 
286 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

come to know what we truly are only by 
beholding Christ. We rise into our com- 
plete exalted existence by spiritual identi- 
fication with Him. Animated by His quick- 
ening power, we shall experience a like 
glorification with Him. 

Paul knew that these Corinthian Chris- 
tians understood him when he wrote to 
them of the quickening power of Christ, for 
Paul had made the Christian life synony- 
mous with dominance by the Holy Spirit. 
They were conscious of some spiritual 
force operating upon their hearts and 
bringing them into conformity to the will 
of God. Paul enjoyed the richest inward 
experiences. He was aware of spiritual 
phenomena that could not be interpreted 
as consequent upon the ordinary bodily 
life. These mysterious spiritual occurrences 
he knew were not the result of his bodily 
connection with Adam. They transcended 
the usual experiences of the bodily exist- 
ence. They came only through the work- 
ing of Christ upon his own spirit. And it 
was just this conscious life with Christ 
that made convincing Paul's assurance of 
287 



THE RESURRECTION 

an after-life, and of the new body to be 
given after death. The presence of the 
life-giving spirit within the believer's heart, 
operating now to bring him into spiritual 
conformity with Christ, that is the earnest, 
the foretaste of that blessed experience 
when this renewed spirit inparted by Christ 
shall receive a glorified body suitable to 
the existence that is to be in His presence. 
God will house it in an appropriate dwell- 
ing. 

Because man's spiritual life is not per- 
fected here he can not expect to receive 
in this life the perfected body. This must 
come as God's great climax gift to man in 
the life beyond. The spiritualized, heav- 
enly body is the direct result of the spirit- 
ualized personality. The natural must come 
first. By all those earthly experiences, 
incident upon his being a part of the 
physical world, is his soul wonderfully dis- 
ciplined for participation in another life. 
And, indeed, no fact of man's entire human 
existence is so potent to show his basal 
dependence upon God, nor to arouse in 
him a true faith in God, than the disaster 
288 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

of physical death. It humbles his pride, 
it solemnizes him in times of boisterous 
indifference; it subdues him into thoughtful 
self-examination concerning his ways in 
the sight of the God before whom he must 
one day stand; it teaches him to evaluate 
properly the eternal riches; it stirs him 
into effort to achieve those things well 
pleasing in the sight of God. Ever is God 
striving to persuade man by death that 
this world is but a training-place, not a 
home; that life must have spiritual goals, 
not physical; that God is the final Arbiter 
over the destiny of mankind, and not the 
forces of nature. All the bewildering, tu- 
multuous experiences of our fleeting, un- 
satisfying years are minor lessons leading 
up to the one supreme lesson of death. 
By pain and disaster and mystery and grief 
and desolation is God endeavoring to 
teach us submission to Him, and hunger 
for Him, and trust in Him. Death, how- 
ever awful it may seem, is God's supreme 
physical agent for awakening man to spirit- 
uality. By its awful shock among men the 
sleeping, sinful soul is aroused to thought- 
19 289 



THE RESURRECTION 

fulness. All of man's haughty boastings 
as to independence vanish before the on- 
slaught of the great victor — God's agent 
to execute His high purpose among human 
beings. And when man's soul has been 
enlarged by spiritual desires and aspira- 
tions, and purified by holy thoughts, and 
purged by earthly woes and joys; when 
the earthly life has done all that it can to 
discipline man's spirit, then will the amaz- 
ing privileges of the future life begin; then 
to man will be given such a body as his 
prepared spirit needs. 

Through faith in Christ does the tran- 
scendent gift come. What Christ is He has 
power to help others to become. He is 
more than a passive Adam. He is the 
energizing Lord, ever striving to bring 
His own into spiritual and bodily similarity 
to Himself. Were we born to be like the 
first man in his mortality? Then through 
Christ are we born to be like Him in His 
glorious immortality. His own resurrec- 
tion is holy pledge of ours. 

In obedience to the universal law that 
the spiritual comes only as the holy climax 
290 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

to the natural does Paul further interpret 
the difference between the natural and the 
celestial body. He shows that the char- 
acteristics of the one are completely earthly, 
and of the other, completely heavenly; 
because the origin of the two are different. 
Paul still has in mind the significant thought 
that as the progenitor so must be the off- 
spring. Like must produce like. But be- 
cause of the abysmal difference between 
Christ and Adam can be found firmest 
ground for the belief in a heavenly resur- 
rection body. In sum-total of qualities 
Christ is utterly unlike Adam. To be sure 
Christ assumed that physical body that 
was connected by earthly ties to Adam; but 
He transcended it finally, and in His true, 
inward personality He was "the Lord and 
Ruler of the Universe, whose dwelling- 
place is in Heaven." He came to earth, 
but He was not of earth. 

Not so with Adam. God had a definite 
purpose with him, and fashioned him ac- 
cordingly. His body is suitable to his 
environment and to the kind of life that 
he is to live. God purposely puts limita- 
291 



THE RESURRECTION 

tions upon the qualities and powers of 
his body. We can easily conceive how 
God could so have constructed him as to 
be free from all vicissitudes and superior 
to all deteriorating influences, and not 
subject to disease and weakness and death. 
But he was not thus made. His body 
shares in the physical characteristics of the 
earth in its atomic structure, at the same 
time that it is the instrument of the spirit 
striving to execute its will. By the de- 
liberate plan of God it is not the highest 
form of body that could be created, but it 
is the best possible for man in his earthly 
life. Consequently it must conform to 
all earthly laws; be subject to mundane 
limitations; be assailable by sickness and 
suffering; be dependent upon the products 
of the earth for its nourishment; and 
finally, having passed through life's cycle 
of birth, youth, maturity, age, find that its 
powers have dwindled, its glories deterior- 
ated, and that death awaits it. 

As a thatched cottage is made for brief 
occupancy, so is our body. Impermanence 
is written across every part. Its frailty 
292 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

is evident everywhere. In comparison with 
the changeless hills it is but as a summer 
cloud. Other forms of life outlast it a 
hundred times. The giant oak, the mighty 
redwood, witness the passing of many 
generations of men. It is a garment to be 
worn by the spirit for a little while and 
then cast away as having served its pur- 
pose. 

The physical Adam had but an earthly 
origin. Out of the dust God created him 
when he had the breath of life put into him. 
But one consequence is possible, therefore, 
for his physical body. To dust it must re- 
turn again. Built of earth it must return to 
earth. Composed of those physical atoms 
that are mysteriously gathered out of the 
physical world about us, it must surrender 
them all again, that they may go on their 
endless cycle of usefulness in nature's vast 
laboratory where nothing is lost. And be- 
cause we are Adam's bodily descendants 
do we come irrevocably under the law of 
his physical experiences. Whatever Adam 
might have desired for himself and his 
offspring concerning freedom from phys- 
293 



THE RESURRECTION 

ical vicissitude and decay and death, this 
counted as nothing in the sight of God 
who had planned differently for man's 
body. Death was one of the inevitable 
facts for which God had provided in the 
creation of mankind. 

But with Christ a new, divine regime 
began. In the glory of Christ's resurrec- 
tion God showed once for all what could be 
done for a human being. In Christ, God 
foretold what would be the normal ex- 
istence for every obedient child. In His 
glorified state, Christ was no longer sub- 
ject to earthly laws, nor dependent upon 
earthly conditions, nor sustained by earthly 
means, nor hampered by earthly limita- 
tions, nor equipped with but few faculties. 
He is a different type. He was superior 
to earth. He is "of heaven," partaking 
of its characteristics, governed by its laws, 
elevated to its possibilities, equipped for 
sharing in its privileges, partaking of its 
glory. His body is fitted for its new en- 
vironment, as the bones and feathers and 
structure of a bird's body are suitable 
for supremacy over the air. Forever free 
294 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

is He of every limitation that was His 
when in fleshly form. He had His abode 
among men as their Savior. 

Christ demonstrates what is the heav- 
enly type as certainly as does Adam what 
is the earthly. And because Christ is of 
heavenly origin has He proportionate power 
to confer upon His own, approximating Him 
in spiritual quality, the glorified body like 
that in which He has His existence in ex- 
altation. Mankind has no longer its head 
in Adam, the sinful, the mortal; but in 
Christ, the Sinless and Immortal! No 
longer is it bound to Adam, in his death, 
by the law of an earthly heredity. It is 
similarly bound to Christ in regeneration 
of character and resurrection of life by the 
unswerving law of a heavenly heredity. 
Through spiritual identification with the 
Holy Christ, whereby His Spirit works upon 
our spirit and equips us with His power, 
we will become identified with Him also 
in the bodily glorification. 

Our new life source is in Christ. He 
bestows His power upon those who sur- 
render themselves to Him in willing obedi- 
295 



THE RESURRECTION 

ence. What He experienced, then, as the 
final culmination of his earthly career must 
be ours also. Participation with Him in 
the redemption from the earthly to the 
celestial body, that is our supreme privi- 
lege. If at one time the earthly is our lot 
and we feel ourselves held within the iron 
grasp of its vicissitudes, now through 
Christ we recognize ourselves to be heirs 
of a body that transcends the earthly and 
is fitted for a celestial existence. Christ 
can confer upon us much more than did 
Adam, because as a spiritual force Christ 
is of transcendently greater nature. If the 
inevitable consequence of our earthliness 
is our unavoidable mortality, then the 
equally certain result of our spiritual union 
with Christ will be the body incorruptible. 
Our earthly body is vitalized by the in- 
ferior principle — the soul — conferred upon 
Adam; the new body will be vitalized by 
the exalted principle — the spirit — bestowed 
by Christ, through obedience to Him. In 
the omnipotent providence of God, those 
who have received the lower form of body 
will be privileged, in His good time, to re- 
296 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

ceive the higher type of life. This will be 
the fitting sequel to our earthliness. 

To this sublime plan of God there is a 
divine inevitableness. Only by such a cli- 
max can we know what bodily perfectness 
is. We must bear the image of Christ, 
for we are related to Him spiritually, and 
God would never be satisfied to let us 
have anything but the highest and most 
complete existence. Christ's resurrection, 
therefore, becomes instrumental to ours. 
Through faith in Him as the risen Lord our 
spiritual natures are brought under His 
sovereignty, and we open our being to the 
indwelling of that Spirit by which comes 
the redemption of the body. Then shall 
death have been abolished when in spirit 
and body we are like Him. 

A final word does Paul speak concerning 
this spiritual or celestial body. Being un- 
der the thraldom of materialistic concep- 
tions, some of these Corinthian Christians 
must have had false notions as to what the 
resurrection body was. The modern thinker 
would do well to linger long over this part 
of Paul's argument. The great apostle 
297 



THE RESURRECTION 

maintains neither the fleshly materiality of 
the Pharisaic resurrection nor the bodiless 
condition of the Greek conception, but an 
intermediate conception of a spiritual body. 
He frees his Corinthian questioners from 
the supposition that the glorified resurrec- 
tion body is precisely the same body that 
was laid into the grave in burial, or that 
the person arose with the same bodily 
characteristics and physical qualities that 
were his at death. Nor is the old Corin- 
thian fallacy overcome yet. The erroneous 
conception has had strange power of per- 
sistence throughout the Christian centuries, 
despite Paul's clear refutation. The King- 
dom of Heaven can not be inherited by 
flesh and blood. The carnal body being 
of earthly nature is adapted only to the 
earthly. The animal organism of man is 
not fitted for the higher Kingdom of the 
Spirit, since it is constituted by God on an 
entirely different and lower grade than 
characterizes the heavenly. "Corruption 
can not inherit incorruption." Their frail 
body is made subject to waste and decay 
and disintegration. It vanishes into the 
298 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

mysterious realms of matter from which 
by the Spirit of God it was taken. 

Utterly different is the resurrection 
body. It is exalted above the present 
fleshly organism. To reign with Christ in 
the endless ages, our poor, changeful, 
earthly body is pitifully inadequate. It 
harmonizes and correlates only with a phys- 
ical world. In no sense is it suitable for 
that heavenly environment in which Christ 
reigns in glory. The momentous trans- 
formations that affected His body during 
the time after His resurrection and at His 
ascension ought to be conclusive proof to 
us of this. The purified personality through 
which our identity will be maintained will 
build a new body for itself by the power of 
God. It can not be the one of flesh and 
blood laid away to decay in the earth. 
The grave holds only what is material and 
physical. That body, wonderful as it was, 
has finished its course and has returned again 
to the nourishing earth out of which it was 
constructed. We need not be unwilling 
to lay it aside, nor compelled to mourn 
for it, nor expect that it, in its weakness 
299 



THE RESURRECTION 

and humiliation and incompleteness, will 
ever again garment the spirit. We sur- 
render our pilgrim tent to enter the glory 
of the palace built by the Divine Architect. 
The earthly body is not exalted enough 
to be habitation for our personality that 
is to live in the presence of God. He per- 
mits the lesser to be destroyed that He may 
erect the greater. Some sublime change 
must come to fit us for abode in the heav- 
enly places. 

That Paul thus believed, we see con- 
clusively from his statement that at the 
coming of Christ those that are alive on the 
earth must undergo some mysterious phys- 
ical transformation, and the carnal organism 
of flesh and blood be transmuted into the 
heavenly body. Instead of waiting for 
death to effect the significant change, they 
would have their mortal bodies exchanged 
for the celestial, as "in a moment, in the 
twinkling of an eye." But a change must 
come. 

The present body has fulfilled God's 
holy purpose toward man when it serves 
us until death, be that sooner or later. 
300 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

In the after-life as it pleases Him will God 
bestow upon the glorified personality of 
man a body appropriate to the heavenly 
state. We need have no gloomy misgiv- 
ings about this mortal body. By all the 
incomprehensible transformations through 
which it passes from conception and birth 
until death, has God been preparing us for 
the thought of laying aside the earthly 
body permanently. By every majestic mes- 
sage that He had spoken to us concerning 
His power and His love has He been en- 
deavoring to awaken in us a trust that 
He will not leave the spirit unclothed. 
Even though we must lie down to die, we 
may do so in the firm confidence that He 
will give us a body that is "superhuman in 
origin, eternal in creation, heavenly in 
character." Then, indeed, shall corruption 
have been clothed with incorruption, and 
mortality shall have put on immortality. 



301 



CHAPTER XV 
THE VICTORY OVER DEATH 



Through Adam's sin, death acquired its signifi- 
cance as pain and punishment. — Ewald. 

Sin introduced no essential change in the 
physical organization of man, but merely in the 
manner in which his earthly existence terminates. 
Had it not been for sin, death would have been 
only the form of a higher development of life. — 
Neander. 

It would be a curse upon ears of corn not to 
be reaped; and we ought to know that it would 
be a curse upon man not to die. — Epictetus. 

Who has not sometimes felt the bondage of 
the body and the trials of earth, and peered with 
awful thrills of curiosity into the mysteries of the 
unseen world until he has longed for the hour of 
the soul's liberation that it might plume itself for 
an immortal flight? — Alger. 

In the economy of God, death ministers in 
many ways to fuller life. Because of sin, death 
has acquired a significance which does not belong 
to it, as a stage in the process of life. — Beckwith. 

On the borders of the grave the wise man looks 
forward with equal elasticity of mind and hope — 
and why not, after millions of years, on the verge 
of still newer existence? — Emerson. 

He fixed thee in this dance 

Of plastic circumstance; 
This present, thou, forsooth, would'st fain arrest: 

Machinery just meant 

To give thy soul its bent, 
Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed. 

— Browning. 



CHAPTER XV 
The Victory Over Death 

So when this corruptible shall have put on in- 
corruption, and this mortal shall have put on im- 
mortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying 
that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. 
O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is 
thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the 
strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, 
which giveth us the victory through our Lord 
Jesus Christ. — Verses 5^-57. 

Having answered by analogy from nature 
how the dead can be raised, and having 
clarified the thoughts of his questioners as 
to the character of the resurrection body, 
Paul's spirit, musing upon the glories of 
the resurrection life, bursts out into ecstatic 
rejoicing. He beholds a vision. The ma- 
jesty of it so moves him that his rich, 
emotional nature pours itself out in one 
thrilling paean of rejoicing. Through the 
20 305 



THE RESURRECTION 

power of Christ the time must come when 
all death shall be abolished and Christ, 
the living, conquering Sovereign, shall rule 
in realms across which the shadow of death 
can never fall. 

Against the thought of the victory by 
death, Paul put the glorious thought of the 
victory by Christ. Through the one has 
come into the world sickness and ' sorrow 
and gloom and desolation and hopeless- 
ness. Everywhere has death ruled. All 
ages have felt its dread sway. It has 
touched the rosy cheek of the babe, sleeping 
at its mother's breast, and turned it into 
cold alabaster. It has changed the light in 
the eyes of youth into midnight gloom. It 
has laid crushing burdens upon maturity's 
shoulders until they sank to earth. It has 
hounded the aged across all the years, until 
at last the prey has been overtaken. Like 
a heartless, all-powerful foe its heavy foot 
has crushed all to earth. As goes the fatal 
reaper across the flower-bedecked meadows, 
so has death gone into the ranks of men. 
None could stand before it. None could flee 
from it. The earth has become one vast 
306 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

cemetery, holding the bodies of those whom 
it has brought low. Graves are everywhere. 
The rolling hillsides, the vast prairies, the 
silvery rivers, the boundless oceans — all are 
sacred with their toll of death. What a 
mockery existence has seemed, when death 
finally gets the victory! Where are the 
multitudes that once laughed and dreamed 
and hoped and toiled and struggled? They 
have been cut down by the great destroyer. 
The generations, those leaves on God's 
mystic tree of life, have fallen into decay 
before death's chilly blast. The nations, 
those specter-forms that once loudly boasted 
of affluence and might and glory, have 
passed into nothingness like cloud-shadows 
across the restless sea. Those mighty 
peoples that in swarming cities framed 
majestic laws, and established splendid 
institutions, and achieved stupendous tasks, 
or sang their unholy songs, and wallowed 
in their sins, and revelled in the intoxica- 
tion of their strength, and wheeled mighty 
armies, and built beautiful palaces and 
stately temples and lengthy highways, and 
in the unrestrained hauteur of their un- 
307 



THE RESURRECTION 

tamed spirit imagined that they would sur- 
vive forever — they are but restless ghosts 
out yonder on history's horizon. Over- 
whelmed by death they lie prostrate among 
their pitiful ruins that tell of a glory for- 
ever vanished! 

Death seems final conqueror! Nothing 
so holy, so beautiful, so strong as to escape 
its heavy hand. Like gloating monster 
greedy for prey, its hungry maw is never 
satisfied. No escape for the angel-faced 
babe crooning out its cherub music in 
heavenly innocence. No pity for the eager- 
eyed youth dreaming of achievement. No 
regard for the stalwart hero of high char- 
acter whose influence falls in blessing upon 
needy mankind as did Peter's shadow 
across the despairing sick. No sympathy 
for those snow-crowned saints whose holy 
lives have been like flower gardens distilling 
sweetest perfume throughout the long years. 
Against all is his blood-stained sword raised. 
All are doomed. On their foreheads is the 
sign of his possession. The myriads be- 
long to him. Naught that man can do 
will ward off the fatal blow. To no pe- 
308 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

tition for mercy will he sympathetically 
listen. Anxious skill can build no strong 
battlement around the body which he will 
not raze to earth. Helpless against him 
are the devices of men, as the sand mounds 
of little children on the sea shore against 
the onrushing, tempest-driven floodtide. 
What awful instruments death has used 
to accomplish its purpose! In Nuremburg 
Castle is the chamber of horrors where are 
displayed the tools of the Inquisition. But 
death has a thousand machines of destruc- 
tion with which to wreak vengeance upon 
man's helpless body. Like a monster ty- 
rant breathing out awful destruction does 
death's fiendish ingenuity express itself in 
countless, awful methods for humiliating 
and harassing and destroying man's body 
so that it must be hurried away to the grave. 
What an inferno of diseases tortures the 
sensitive muscle and delicate tissue and 
quivering nerve and complicated organ, 
until in the hour of the tantalizings man's 
spirit burst into bitter anguish of protest. 
Pain runs like consuming wild-fire through 
every wasted sinew and swollen joint and 
309 



THE RESURRECTION 

tender vital, until exhausted by agony, the 
weary, sickened body sinks at last to earth. 
Suffering attacks the frame, and twists and 
wrenches and distorts and deforms and 
cripples, through the unspeakable torment 
of the slow-moving years, until the poor 
body is left ghastly and broken like some 
tree smitten by the thunder-bolt. The 
breath comes with strangling gasps, the 
brain sickens, the heart throbs with 
dagger thrusts, the process of nourishment 
proceeds with fiendish agony, until the 
weary limbs carry the exhausted, tottering 
body to the open grave. Death rides 
leader to the hosts in every battle, and 
when he has finished his black work the 
flowery meadow is blood-soaked and awful 
with the heavy burden of the lacerated and 
shattered out of whose strong bodies life 
has been blown or beaten or pierced. The 
majestic forces of nature to which man 
looks for friendly protection turn against 
him as savage-hearted traitors. The balmy 
zephyr gives way to the staggering cyclone. 
The white-winged ships heedlessly sailing 
the calm seas with the priceless cargo of 
310 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

human beings is caught in the iron grip of 
wild Euroclydon and hurled upon the rocks 
or sunken reefs, where the terror-stricken 
passengers find a watery grave. The cara- 
van safely crossing the treacherous desert is 
suddenly enveloped by the gloomy sand- 
laden simoom that obliterates the pathway 
and buries the oases with its hot breath, 
and overcoming the bewildered pilgrims 
leaves them to die of the thirst that clutches 
at the throat and glazes the eye. The 
spark of fire catching in the cottagers' roof 
leaves his home as black burial-shroud for 
the loved ones, and leaping from roof to 
roof, leaves a city in ruins, and its desolated 
inhabitants mourning over the grim harvest. 
Tidal-waves, black-maned and terrible, sub- 
merge the quiet village where the toilers 
sleep. Titan earthquakes shake down noble 
edifices and amid the pitiful ruins crushed 
bodies lie. Angry volcanoes belch forth 
poisonous smoke and burning lava, and 
make prey of the defenseless multitudes in 
the quiet valleys. Thunderbolts smite man 
in the black, stormy night. The sharp- 
toothed, winter wind chills his blood and 
311 



THE RESURRECTION 

blows out the candle of his life and leaves 
the stiffened body as prey for hungry 
wolves. By fang of poisonous serpent and 
claw of beast does he perish. The ex- 
plosion shatters the beauty of his frame. 
Gravitation clutches him in its iron grasp, 
and hurls him shrieking to death. The 
drop of poison unsuspectingly sipped in 
the ruddy wine lets loose the torment in 
his blood. The fire-damp of the wet mine 
chokes him into suffocation. From the 
cup of clear water he drinks the microbes 
of death. The very air he breathes is 
laden with destruction. The pestilence 
crawls into the beggar's hovel or glides 
worse than venomous snake into the palace 
where the king feels its deadly touch. Or 
if by persistent care and skillful attention 
of doctors man escapes his countless ene- 
mies, then age, stealing over his faculties, 
palsies his powers. At last, like some candle 
burned to the socket, the light of life goes 
out and only the clay candlepiece remains 
to tell of the flame that has vanished. 
Death everywhere has the victory! Its 
instruments are countless. Against its at- 
312 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

tack the weak body is defenseless. Over 
all that have ever existed death shouts 
its triumph. 

To Paul the sense of sin, the conscious- 
ness of guilt, was what made death so awful. 
This was "death's sting," more fiery than 
the poison of the scorpion. Tragic indeed 
that man must die, that alone he must go 
into the shadows, that while enjoying life 
he must break with all of its delightful tasks, 
its holy companionships, its rich privileges. 
But what makes death unspeakably sad, 
is that when man comes tremblingly down 
to the brink of the river and looks across 
the flood, and knows that life's opportunities 
are over, his spirit is burdened by the 
knowledge of its own uncleanness, and is 
harassed by the thought of willful dis- 
obedience to God, disloyalty to His love, 
rebellion against His purpose, unresponsive- 
ness to His leading, indifference to His ex- 
pectations, hard-heartedness against God's 
children, unsympathy against his own 
brethren. The final agony to death, sharper 
than the plunging pain that convulses the 
frame, is the poignant sense of self-con- 
313 



THE RESURRECTION 

demnation in the sight of the righteous 
God into whose presence the soul is soon 
to go. The strong law has tried to con- 
trol us, but it could not redeem us, inasmuch 
as the heart hated its restraints and re- 
belled at its restrictions. The very law 
itself which made known so clearly the 
will of God, becomes a tormentor as men 
realize how pitifully short they have come 
of fulfilling its behests. Law has but 
sharpened the conscience — that stings like 
a serpent's bite. Our lives have fallen 
pitifully short of God's loving purpose for 
us. At a thousand points memory flagel- 
lates with its gloomy recollections. The 
soul, polluted by its sins and marred by 
inward depravity, feels terror-stricken at 
leaving this life, to stand before the throne 
of an adjudging God. Verily, the "sting 
of death is sin." 

Everywhere does death reign — except 
at the grave of Christ! In the Son of God, 
unconquered death meets its Vanquisher. 
To show His complete identification with 
mankind, Christ will let His body be pierced 
by nail and sword until life has left it; but 
314 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

ere death comes He commits Himself to 
the loving, all-powerful Father, knowing 
that there will be a resurrection and a 
future life for himself. He prophesied 
that death could have no permanent sway 
over Himself. And on the third day, be- 
cause God was befriending Him, did the 
black tomb give up its victim, so that 
Christ might arise, the firstfruits of them 
that slept, to declare to all the dying mul- 
titudes that they, too, were children of 
light, heirs of the resurrection and of the 
life everlasting. 

Not strange that in the ecstasy of his 
joy over Christ's victory Paul should cry 
out, "O grave, where is thy victory?" 
Broken forever now the power of death. 
We must succumb to its law, but we know 
in Christ that there is a mightier than death. 
Still must mankind be laid away into the 
tomb, as the hurrying centuries pass, until 
God's holy purposes in this world are com- 
pleted; but mankind knows through Christ 
that the victory belongs to Him, and that 
He will call His own into a life celestial. 

Christ's final victory — that is all that 
315 



THE RESURRECTION 

Paul can think of! Only this fills now His 
vision. Pondering upon the meaning of 
the empty tomb, Paul can think of nothing 
but the time when, purified by God's love, 
man's spirit, having survived the grave, 
builds for itself the glorified body, and has 
its existence under circumstances over which 
the exalted Christ holds undisputed rule 
in the presence of God. Then shall death 
have been banished. There the celestial 
body will enjoy its changeless glory before 
His face. Then shall Christ, He who was 
dead and was raised again, have His com- 
plete victory over the grave, and the balm 
of His indwelling grace shall heal the spirit 
from the sting of sin. The yearnings, the 
instincts, the hopes of the heart are not 
meaningless. They are God's angels to 
the soul. When death has been swal- 
lowed up in victory, and the spirit has 
been redeemed from the law of sin and of 
death, then shall the heart burst forth into 
its great hallelujah chorus of rejoicing, 
"Thanks be to God, who giveth us the 
victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." 
This must be the exultant paean that sounds 
316 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

from mankind's lips when it realizes how 
vast are God's plans through Christ, and 
how transcendently great is to be that 
unclouded existence with Him in the glory 
of the eternal home. After earth's be- 
wilderments, its tumults, its dissatisfac- 
tions, its ills, its sufferings, its sin, its 
death — we shall be raised into new life 
with Him, and we shall be satisfied when 
we awake with His likeness! 

When the Christian Church comes to 
believe as firmly in the triumph of Jesus 
Christ over sin and death as did Saint Paul, 
then can we say with as great assurance 
and quiet calmness as did he, "To die is 
gain." We are not bankrupt losers when 
we make the solemn change from earth to 
heaven. Our riches are not surrendered. 
We have not been robbed of our wealth nor 
despoiled of our possessions when we pass 
out of this life to enter another. God is 
not a hard bargainer. We need not be 
afraid to yield to His inevitable laws. The 
welfare and joy and prosperity and satis- 
faction of this life, these are but foretastes 
of what the loving Father will do for us in 
317 



THE RESURRECTION 

another life where every external circum- 
stance will be beneficial to our development. 
The majesty of that life is beyond the power 
of our feeble, childish minds to imagine. 
Like the chrysalis bursting through the 
narrow prison house of its little shell to be- 
come this light-winged butterfly, floating 
in the sunshine and drinking nectar from the 
myriad flowers, so shall it be for man to pass 
from the heavy, cumbersome, evil-smitten, 
earthly body to the body ethereal, change- 
less, celestial, eternal! The vastest in- 
vestment with God that any human being 
ever makes is when he trustfully submits 
his body in death to the loving care of an 
omnipotent Father, knowing that all things 
work together for good to them that love 
God. 

Looking at death through the eyes of 
Christ we must reinterpret it to ourselves. 
If "to die is gain," then death is an angel 
of God in disguise. It executes the loving 
will of the Most High. It is not robber, but 
benefactor. Under God's control it is a 
beautiful-faced messenger of mercy. If 
we but knew to what "sublime blessings it 
318 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

calls us, we would welcome departure from 
this life, and release into that, as God's 
holiest boon to us. Were it not for the 
farewells to those loved ones left behind, we 
would anticipate with exuberant eagerness, 
after life's struggle and toil and hardship, 
the entrance upon the higher existence. 
In hours of profoundest spiritual com- 
munion with God we would long "to be 
with Christ," as did Paul. Feeling at 
peace with Christ, having His Spirit witness 
with our spirit that we were the children 
of God, we could hail willingly, joyfully, 
triumphantly the last hour of an earthly 
existence and move, with undismayed, 
unquestioning heart, out into the great 
mystery, knowing that by the presence 
there of Christ the shadow has changed 
into light. Knowing Him as our Shepherd, 
we can chant as we see God's angel of death 
approaching, "Yea, though I walk through 
the valley of the shadow of death, I will 
fear no evil, for Thou art with me." To 
exchange this life for that will be to pass 
from incompleteness and imperfection to 
sufficiency and fullness. Nor will we care 
319 



THE RESURRECTION 

in whatever form death comes to us, or 
by whatever instrument the thread of life 
is severed. We will not choose by what 
method we pass from this existence. We 
will feel that our lives are in His care, and, 
however grievous may be the tool of death 
that seems to afflict us, it is but like the 
knife in the skillful hand of the loving 
surgeon, who cuts only to save. 

Our faith in Christ emancipates us from 
the dread of death. Knowing that it is 
God's wise helper for bringing us into the 
fuller life, we shall not be afraid to meet 
it. As little children trustfully place their 
hand in the parent's hand, so may we 
calmly submit ourselves to God's leading. 
He can be trusted. He has ordained death 
for our infinite good. If death has had its 
mysterious place in this world of ours 
from the very dawn of sentient life, then 
God holds it in His steadfast control for 
high purposes of blessing. It is somehow 
our unfailing friend. To die is but to close 
the tired eyes after the heat and weariness 
and struggle of the day to awaken in God's 
morning land and to be forever with Christ. 
320 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

Because Christ has banished the fear of 
death and holds out to us the precious 
solace of the endless life, may we indeed 
"comfort each other" with words of cheer 
and hope, as we earnestly fulfill life's high 
callings now, and discipline the spirit for 
the glorified life beyond. 

What joyous thanksgivings ought to 
thrill our spirit as the assurance of the 
triumph through Christ possesses us! Life 
and righteousness are to be forever supreme 
over death and sin. In the pure light of 
this holy hope every earthly shadow van- 
ishes and the inner music, more sweet than 
seraph's songs, swells in the heart. Who 
can refuse to praise at the thought of what 
God has done for us through Christ, and 
for the blessings unmeasured when we re- 
ceived the promised inheritance? As be- 
wildered pilgrims, fear-smitten by the mid- 
night tempest, hail with exultation the rosy 
dawn, so may the Christian world rejoice. 
Death is abolished! Is this majestic life 
at its best, rich, precious, desirable? God 
will give us a richer one. After the fleeting 
years of earth's short span God will open 
21 321 



THE RESURRECTION 

the treasures of eternity to us. There we 
shall see Him, and His benediction will be 
our life. Face to face shall we be with 
Christ, who gave Himself for us and re- 
deemed us from iniquity and death. Then 
fellowship blissful shall there be with the 
loved one, "lost a little while," but ever 
secure in the love-watch of God. And in 
ecstasy of joy shall we join the chorus of 
praise to God's Son, who came into life to 
show us its greatness, who passed through 
death to life that He might win us to holi- 
ness and immortality. 



322 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE MOTIVE-POWER OF THE 
RESURRECTION 



Apostolic belief in the resurrection of Christ 
was but a preliminary to devotion and self-sur- 
render to Christ as risen. — Simpson. 

Tell me that my life is bounded and that I am 
a creature of "now," and that moment there is 
a shrinkage in my aspirations and expectations, 
and consequently an awful shrinkage in my 
purposes and enterprises. I will attempt nothing 
so large that I can not finish it before the sun goes 
down; I will desire nothing that this life can not 
bestow. I must live as a timid, cramped, crippled, 
temporary thing should live. — Gregg. 

The sad memories which death brings are a 
part of our education. Under the influence of an 
absent soul the heart softens, and man goes forth 
each day more of a friend to his race, and more of 
a worshiper of his God. Sorrow must ennoble 
duty, not end it. The death of a friend exalts 
those who remain. — Swing. 

A faith that does not fill this world with God, as 
well as world's unseen, is unreal and worthless. — 
Dale. 



CHAPTER XVI 

The Motive-Power of the Resurrection 

Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stead- 
fast, unmovable, always abounding in the work 
of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your 
labor is not in vain in the Lord. — Verse 58. 

Paul was great enough to recognize that 
no spiritual truth is worth anything that 
does not contribute to the present uplift 
of humanity. As a "practical idealist," 
he was no dreamy visionary idly revelling 
in the luxury of a newly-discovered revela- 
tion. He saw all truth in its significant 
relationship to mankind as it now is. Hav- 
ing completed his matchless argument for 
the future life, his final word must be a 
message of exhortation. The revelation 
must become a dynamic. They must live 
by it, be governed by it, in all the com- 
plexities of human activities and achieve- 
ments. The holy faith must royally con- 
trol all of life. Because men, by faith in 
325 



THE RESURRECTION 

the resurrected Christ, are heirs to immor- 
tality, must every person treat himself and 
every other being differently than if there 
were no after-life. This earthly existence 
must be interpreted in vastly higher terms, 
and must grow into immeasurably greater 
proportions now that it is known that we 
are the children of God, called to live for- 
ever with Him. New privileges, new duties 
are ours now, because we know how glori- 
ously every human being is related to the 
loving purposes of God. 

That this assurance of a resurrection 
life must have its tremendous influence 
upon this present life, this is Paul's sig- 
nificant conclusion. His argument culmi- 
nates in a "therefore." Something follows 
because men have this hope. New glory 
must come to this earthly existence because 
it was to be supplemented by the eternal. 
This hope was not a mere theme for dis- 
cussion among philosophers. It must not 
be considered a mere theoretical conclusion 
to be intellectually cherished. It was a 
priceless revelation so sublime that it must 
irradiate all that was human with a new 
326 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

glory. Because of it the race must throb 
with new and divine power. Believing in 
the future life, every human being must 
begin the practice of immortality. The 
eternal life, stretching out into the won- 
drous future where God rules, must be 
commenced here and now, as foundations 
are laid deep upon the solid earth for ma- 
jestic temples that raise massive domes into 
the blue sky. The hope of the resurrec- 
tion must purify the mortal existence as 
white-hot fires burn out the dross from the 
ores. It must motive this life so as to 
regenerate it. 

No more serious charge could be brought 
against the belief in a future life than that 
through adherence to it mankind loses 
richest interest in the life that now is. 
The flippant critic sneers that the Christian 
cherishing this hope becomes other-worldly 
and forgets the life that now is. Thinking 
so much of the Kingdom to come, he forgets 
the hell that surrounds him. Intent upon 
inheriting the joys of the future world, he 
neglects the world that now tragically needs 
his assistance. So intently does he fix his 
327 



THE RESURRECTION 

eyes upon the starry heavens, that he can 
not see earth's quagmires and cesspools. 
His ears are straining so hard to hear the 
white-robed chorus of the heavenly city, 
that he fails to hear the cries of anguish, 
the wails of oppression that rise from earth's 
swarming cities where injustice crushes, 
and greed destroys, and tyranny debases, 
and sin pollutes. So absorbed is he in 
reaching the homeland, that he does nothing 
to set up here the home circle where all 
men are brothers. In his desire to inherit 
the eternal riches he miserably fails to 
share in the wealth that God purposes 
humanity to possess here. In his burning 
eagerness to become citizen of the heavenly 
Kingdom, he has no thought of bringing 
that to earth now, so that here God's will 
shall be done as it is in heaven. Under 
the soporific of eternal joys that are to be, 
he becomes drowsy and indifferent to ex- 
isting curses that overshadow life. Be- 
lieving that some day God will wipe away 
all tears, he cares nothing about drying the 
weeping eyes now by removing the hideous 
causes of sorrow and misfortune and woe 
328 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

and shame. Soothed by the hope of a 
future inheritance of gladness, he permits 
to continue, unmolested, the hideous wrongs 
that fatten upon human happiness, and 
that plunge the human family into un- 
speakable degradation and squalor and 
iniquity. So scoffs the sharp-toothed, snarl- 
ing cynic. 

But such a change rests upon a travesty 
of the hope of immortality. No person 
ought to be so passionate in his struggle for 
the betterment of this world; so whole- 
hearted in his loyalty to every exalted 
cause that means the amelioration of the 
conditions of humankind; so sacrificial in 
his self-consecration to the cause of man- 
kind's present regeneration, as the Chris- 
tian animated by his exalted hope of an 
after-life. While he gazes at the heavens, 
he knows where he is stepping. While he 
purposes to enter the city of God, he hero- 
ically strives to establish here the common- 
wealth of love. While he dreams of the 
eternal abode, resonant with music from 
holy lips, he has a passion to help mortal 
lives sing out their holy praise to God. 
329 



THE RESURRECTION 

His faith makes him to look at all that is 
human through the eyes of a self-sacrificing 
God, and to be helper to God in His stu- 
pendous task of redeeming the world. 

No person can be the same human being 
in his relationship with the world after 
believing in a future life. This must en- 
noble, energize, motive, control him in 
everything great or small, where his life 
touches the lives of others. The earthly 
life must be transfigured by the vision of 
the heavenly. We must act now like chil- 
dren of God and make the world a sacred 
place where brothers dwell. Because we 
are to live alway must we begin to live like 
immortals now. Anything that militates 
against man's highest life must be recog- 
nized as hostile to the Most High. God- 
liness must be made profitable for this life 
as well as for that to come. Every possible 
provision must be made to have holiness 
establish its benign rule among men as they 
now are. Every detail of our practice 
must be under absolute sovereignty of our 
holy belief. Because we are to be so great 
some day must we be great now. Nothing 
330 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

must be permitted to cripple our capaci- 
ties, or hamper our development, or impede 
our progress, or crush our instincts, or 
dampen our ardor, or suffocate our en- 
thusiasms now. For what we are now 
will fundamentally determine what we are 
to be. Earthly conditions will either im- 
measurably help or retard the soul in its 
search after righteousness. We can not 
be indifferent to mundane conditions, be- 
cause these regulate so tremendously the 
present spiritual welfare of mankind. 

The belief in the after-life must, there- 
fore, regulate this existence in every phase. 
Under the dynamic of this faith we must 
make this earthly sphere the proper train- 
ing-place for God's heirs to immortality. 
In the light of this hope must we estimate 
all things that retard man's spiritual wel- 
fare. Earthly wrongs, ills, injustices, op- 
pressions, sins, seem never so hideous or 
so terrible as when seen against the back- 
ground of eternity. God is endeavoring 
now to build His Kindgom. If He had 
His perfect way now, there would be among 
His high-born children, called to the priv- 
331 



THE RESURRECTION 

ileges of eternity, no more of selfishness and 
unbrotherliness and iniquity and degrada- 
tion than there is now among His holy 
angels before His presence. 

Only then do we prove ourselves God's 
heirs when we not merely "set our affec- 
tions upon things above," but when we 
passionately, heroically endeavor to root 
these holy flowers in the gardens of earth. 
Only by evaluating humanity as created 
in the likeness of God can we find proper 
incentive to holiness of personal life now. 
All that we think and say and do must be 
under the regimen of this great faith. 
Because men are not worthless clods of 
earth must they be treated with royal 
concern; and every heroic effort must be 
made to transfigure the earthly into the 
heavenly. The thought of our endlessness 
ought to thrill us to herculean efforts 
against all evil. Sin is so awful because 
it jeopardizes the eternal welfare of those 
whom it attacks. Evil would be tragic 
enough did it affect only this life. But its 
results are interminable. It not merely 
despoils the present life of its glory and 
332 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

peace and sanctity. It alienates from God 
the soul to which He desires to give glad 
immortality. We can see it in all of its 
hideous horror, and recognize it as the 
"sting of death," only when we do not 
fail to note its eternal consequences of ruin 
to man's sublime spirit. 

Evil in all of its shocking forms ought 
to have no more bitter, persistent, energetic, 
bold foe than the Christian who believes 
in the resurrection. No one ought to be 
fired with so hot an indignation against all 
sin as the person who believes that char- 
acter abides forever, and that the conse- 
quences of holiness do not terminate with 
the short span of sixty or eighty years of 
mortal life, but that they stretch into the 
incomprehensible aeons of God's eternity. 
No one ought to be more enthusiastic in 
his opposition to social injustice than he 
who believes that social environment is 
either a blessing or a bane to souls to whom 
God holds out the boon of a resurrection 
life. A city slum is a hellish thing when 
we look at its denizens through God's eyes. 
The complex, crippling injustices and tyr- 
333 



THE RESURRECTION 

annies that hold high carnival in society 
to-day must find in the believer in the res- 
urrection an inveterate antagonist, because 
he knows that these oppressed, afflicted 
poor, cheated out of life's rich heritages, 
are God's own children. To every human 
being, because he is so high in the plans 
of God, must be given the chance of de- 
veloping under proper circumstances. This 
world will be the right kind of a prepara- 
tory place for the endless life only when it 
is friendly to the highest human spirit- 
uality; when it offers the proper soil in 
which to grow the perfect flower of the 
holy life; when it aids in every respect the 
aspiring spirit; when it presents not a single 
s tumbling-block to the pilgrim marching 
toward the heavenly mansions; when this 
life is seen to have its perfect consumma- 
tion in an exalted existence after death. 

Profoundly realizing the significance 
upon this life of the hope of the resurrec- 
tion, Paul makes his great argument to 
climax in an exhortation and a promise. 
Urging his readers to the highest types of 
personal character and social service, he 
334 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

shows the value of these in the light of the 
eternity of the Christian. Three qualities 
will characterize the Christian who is pos- 
sessed by the thought of the endless life. 
He will be "steadfast." His faith is a 
firm conviction. He can give a reason for 
it. He is controlled by it as the piece of 
iron is gripped by the magnet. He su- 
premely trusts in it, never doubting its 
high efficacy. Like the psalmist, "His 
heart is fixed." Confiding in it so utterly 
he builds his entire life upon it, as the 
architect trusts in the strong foundations. 
He knows that his house stands upon God's 
sure rock. All of his actions, all of his 
hopes are dominated by the sublime be- 
lief. He does everything with a different 
emphasis, now that he knows himself to be 
an heir of immortality through the merit 
of Christ. His devotion to Christ as His 
spiritual Lord knows no vacillation, now 
that he has this supreme trust in Christ's 
power over the grave. He surrenders him- 
self with entire submission to the sover- 
eignty of Christ, knowing that He who 
overcame death has power of conferring 
335 



THE RESURRECTION 

life upon those who are rooted and grounded 
in Him. 

The Christian will be "immovable." 
Like an unshakable rock will he main- 
tain his firmness. Whatever the force of 
the attack upon his faith, he can offer 
sturdiest resistance to it all. Nothing can 
alter his conviction concerning the truth- 
fulness of his belief. All gloomy doubts 
now are meaningless. They no longer 
harass him. All queries, born of human 
ignorance, he can banish as irrelevant. 
They no longer disturb him. All inex- 
plicable mysteries concerning the resur- 
rection body no longer trouble him. He 
acknowledges the limits of knowledge con- 
cerning the fact of Christ's resurrection, as 
must be done in every other fact with which 
we are acquainted. He does not pretend 
to know all the secrets of God, but he 
joyfully accepts the resurrection of Christ 
with all of its blessed implications as the 
transcendently significant revelation vouch- 
safed to humanity for its inspiration and 
regeneration. Believing in God as he does, 
he finds no difficulty in believing that He 
336 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

has power to bestow an after-life. Nothing 
can shake him from this assurance. Noth- 
ing can disturb the peace and serenity of his 
life. He is not afraid of death. He knows 
that to escape it will be impossible, but he 
knows also "in whom I have believed." 
Death lays siege to the holy circle of home 
and bears away the loved ones. He sees 
his dearest ones laid away in the narrow 
grave. But when lonesomeness is sharpest, 
then his hope burns brightest. His heart 
is lighted by the gleam from God's home, 
just across the river, upon the Delectable 
Hills. He never questions the love or the 
wisdom of God. Had he the power he 
would not recall his departed ones into life, 
for he indeed believes "to die is gain." 
And he knows that they are infinitely 
better off in the presence of God than they 
could be here, surrounded by only human 
care and affection. For God's care and 
affection are unspeakably richer. He feels 
sickness sending its fiery emissaries of 
pain over his long-suffering body; he knows 
that disease will waste him, and want may 
emaciate him, and old age despoil him of the 
22 337 



THE RESURRECTION 

glory of physical strength — but his heart 
sings out its psalm, "Henceforth there is 
laid up for me a crown of righteousness." 
No word of murmuring nor complaint nor 
unsubmissiveness poisons his lip. He be- 
lieves that God "doeth all things well," 
and with eagerness does he await the time 
of his departure. 

No sorrow crushes him, since he knows 
that no harm can come, on sea or shore, 
to those that love Him. The black gloom 
of despondency may try to settle upon him, 
as one by one his trusted friends fall by 
his side; but in the deep skies he ever sees 
God's twinkling stars. An exultant op- 
timism rules his thoughts, for he knows 
that these light afflictions are not worthy 
to be compared with the glories that shall 
be revealed in us. With no agony of 
alarm does he view the decay of his faculties 
and the decrease of his strength through old 
age or sickness, knowing that the fullness 
and richness of his existence does not de- 
pend upon the joys and achievements that 
this life may offer. No curses does he 
hurl at God because life is cut down in its 
338 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

flower of youth. He says with Hugo: 
"Winter is on my head, but eternal spring 
is in my heart. The nearer I approach to 
the end, the plainer I hear around me the 
immortal symphonies of the worlds which 
invite me." When he stands by the new- 
made grave no terror grips his heart. With 
eyes gleaming with the light of love for 
the risen Christ he sings: "0 grave, 
where is thy victory? I thank God which 
giveth us the victory through our Lord 
Jesus Christ." No rebellious protests poi- 
son his words, for he knows that God's 
ways are not our ways, and He that maketh 
the morn to appear out of the night will 
make gladness to come after sorrow. He 
"believes where he can not prove." To 
him the real things are not our mortal 
bodies and this physical world. The reali- 
ties are the changeless purposes of God 
and His unfailing promises. The "Un- 
known" terrorize him not a whit! He walks 
with God, and any pathway is safe. He is 
beyond the attack of skeptic. The shafts 
of the denier fall harmless against his 
panoply. He believes in the resurrection 
339 



THE RESURRECTION 

as the bird silent from its singing in the 
evening shadows, believes in the morning. 
Because God is on the throne does he know 
that even death is God's blessed messenger 
of unspeakable good. He does not mourn 
as those "who have no hope." He has 
sweetest songs in the night. Death may 
fell him by whatever instrument it chooses, 
after having tortured and tormented and 
humiliated his body; but to the angel with 
the light of eternity on its face, he will 
triumphantly shout, "Welcome, Welcome!" 
Immovable in his faith does he live and die. 
Because of his faith will the Christian 
be "abounding in the work of the Lord." 
In everything that pertains to the upbuild- 
ing of holiest character for himself and 
others he will have an absorbing passion. 
His interest will never flag in those forces 
that develop his personality into the like- 
ness of Christ. He will be devotedly con- 
cerned in the building up of a self "worthy 
of a forever." Love, truthfulness, sincer- 
ity, the sense of justice, all the things that 
we recognize as great enough to survive, 
must be trained into his personality. He 
340 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

must prepare a character that by the pos- 
session of the highest qualities will not be 
out of place in the presence of God. Never 
will he lose his fervent zeal for that full 
degree of inward holiness that countenances 
no secret fault nor cherishes any besetting 
sin, but which struggles heroically against 
all evil tendencies, all carnal appetites, all 
low-born satisfactions. 

His life he will enthusiastically dedicate 
to the sublime cause of establishing God's 
commonwealth among men. Does greed 
give birth to the black spirit of oppres- 
sion that coins life-blood into dollars, that 
is deaf to the cries of anguish, that is cold 
to the appeals for assistance, then his hot 
protests will smite and his heavy blows will 
fall until avarice slinks away, afraid and 
defeated, from its helpless prey. Does 
tyranny fatten upon weakness, there the 
Christian becomes vindicator and defender 
to the unfortunate. Does hard-heartedness 
look with unpitying eyes upon the unabated 
sufferings of the lowly, there the Christian 
must thaw out the icy chill and make the 
heart flow in healing streams of sympathy 
341 



THE RESURRECTION 

and helpfulness. Is mankind divided into 
warring camps — each clutching at the 
other's treasures and envious of the other's 
welfare, each despising his fellow-man and 
shouting out angry curses, — then the Chris- 
tian must set himself the stupendous task 
of substituting love for hatred, sacrifice 
for selfishness, the rule of Christ instead 
of the reign of Cain. 

The work which Christ began upon 
earth, the Christian will unfalteringly, val- 
orously continue. Constrained by the 
love which, free as ocean's billows, surged 
in the heart of Christ, like Him must he 
go about doing good. He will hate sin, de- 
spise unbrotherliness, detest selfishness, as 
did the Christ who loved us and gave Him- 
self for us. He will direct his efforts against 
the concrete ills of his time. Against 
everything that is antagonistic to mankind's 
highest spiritual maturity will he be im- 
placable enemy. To all that hastens the 
uplift of humanity — its physical, its in- 
tellectual, its moral emancipation — will he 
be ardent helper. His enthusiasms will 
be deep as the degradations of men, his 
342 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

consecrations lofty as their hopes, his loy- 
alty broad as their possibilities. He will 
be interested not merely in alleviating the 
wants of the poverty-stricken; he will be 
determined to eradicate all hideous, power- 
ful causes of poverty. He will attack not 
merely greed, but the evil heart that is 
breeding-place for greed. He will oppose 
not merely the unjust distribution of wealth, 
but the devilish scorn that makes one man 
forget that he is his brother's keeper. He 
will be zealous for the establishing of those 
exalted institutions of mercy and education 
and culture and government, whereby the 
higher interests of the race are safeguarded 
and enhanced. Always and everywhere 
will he consider it to be sublimest privilege 
to be co-worker with God in establishing 
the Kingdom of Heaven among men. 

Nor will he enter into the "work of the 
Lord" with cold, calculating parsimony, 
nor with narrow half-heartedness. The best 
that he has will belong to God, because 
he believes in the supreme greatness of every 
life. In his abundant service for the trans- 
figuration of mankind he will think nothing 
343 



THE RESURRECTION 

of his own ease or reward or satisfaction. 
At no labors will lie hesitate. No self-de- 
nial will be too large for him to make. No 
dream of a race transformed into new 
social relationships will seem beyond at- 
tainment. No call to heroism that entails 
largest self-sacrifice will be too exacting. 
What will be the unfailing motive that 
actuates the Christian in his heroic life of 
sacrifice? It will be the consciousness that 
his labor is "not in vain in the Lord." 
It shall abide. Its results will be perma- 
nent. Its consequences shall be eternal. 
His toil shall have outcomes that continue 
not for the brief span of a mortal life, but 
forever, — inasmuch as the lives that are in- 
fluenced are to partake of the resurrection. 
These toils for the good of others; these 
heroisms that inaugurate upon earth a 
holier order for the oppressed, the sorrow- 
ing, the lonely, the thwarted, the aspiring, — 
all these are precious seeds watered by God 
that shall wave in abundant, fair harvests 
in eternity. He that labors in the cause 
of God, and for the Kingdom of Christ, is 
not like some architect painstakingly con- 
344 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

structing a palace of ice-blocks that will 
fall away into watery ruins under the light 
of springtime. His material has eternal 
durability. The impressions that it takes, 
the form into which it is fashioned will 
abide forever. Whatever of character- 
glory is achieved will never be lost. God 
holds it in such high valuation that He will 
never let it perish. When the Christian 
tries to fashion his character into beauty, 
and to discipline his personality into great- 
ness by struggling against temptations, and 
surmounting his difficulties, and mastering 
his appetites, and subduing his carnalities, 
then may he know that what he achieves 
will never be overthrown by death. It will 
stand steadfast as mountain peaks. It will 
know no ruin. His glorified personality, 
made pure and holy and noble and exalted, 
shall survive death, and shall be accounted 
precious before God. When he strives to 
make his heart a temple so beautiful that 
Christ dwells in it as in some holy of holies, 
then he may know that this temple shall 
never feel the touch of the vandal hand of 
time. Nothing human, not even death, 
345 



THE RESURRECTION 

could shake it to earth. This spiritual 
architecture God will not let anything de- 
stroy. "The Parthenons are shaken down; 
the pyramids gradually decay under the 
attack of the elements; the statues of bronze 
rust away; the granite shafts crumble into 
dust; but he that doeth the will of the Lord 
shall abide forever." There is that about 
him which to God has priceless value. 

By this sublime motive may every heart 
be steadied that toils for the welfare of 
others. The labors are not fruitless. The 
returns shall be vastly beyond the hopes of 
the heart. The investment will yield amaz- 
ing returns. For those in whose behalf the 
sacrifices are made are precious in God's 
sight. They are heirs of immortality. When 
the Christian struggles against the giant 
evils that cripple the souls of men, he is 
helping into character such spirits as are 
to live forever. These for whom he toils 
and makes his heroic self-denials are so like 
God that He bestows upon them the boon 
of immortality. To sacrifice for such is 
worth while. When through long, gloomy 
years he battles against devilish opposition 
346 



PAUL'S ARGUMENT 

for fairer laws, for larger opportunities, for 
salutary influences, for healthful environ- 
ment, for friendly institutions, he may be 
nerved to his heavy tasks by the thought 
that those for whose good he makes his 
self-renunciations are not like insects of a 
summer day destined for nothingness. They 
are the loved ones of God, capable of spir- 
itual sublimity and destined for the ever- 
lasting life. He will not be calculating, 
parsimonious, narrow-hearted. How can 
he be when he knows that whatever good 
he calls into being in human hearts is to 
live forever? Does he endure hardship? 
does he place his life in daily jeopardy? does 
he fight the wild beasts of Ephesus? does 
he subject himself to misunderstanding 
and ostracism and persecution and martyr- 
dom? does he surrender his own joys and 
satisfactions and pleasures? does he renounce 
all things that are dear to his heart? — ever 
is he cheered and sustained by the holy 
assurance that those for whom he suffers 
and sacrifices are some day to stand, by his 
help, redeemed in the presence of God. 
No self-surrender, no faithfulness, no 
347 



THE RESURRECTION 

devotion shall be ineffectual! No large- 
hearted loyalty, no stalwart obedience, no 
willing assuming of responsibility, no firm- 
ness against evil shall be without magnifi- 
cent consequences. All these shall help to 
bring among men the Kingdom of God that 
never fadeth away, because it is composed 
of citizens who, through likeness to Christ, 
are partakers of His resurrection glory. 

This is the message our time needs. 
Because we are to be heirs of Christ's 
glories in eternity, let us cultivate the 
virtues of the spirit now. Let us purify 
now the inner life by faith in our risen Lord. 
Let us free ourselves from all that links 
to the temporal and carnal and earthly, and, 
in preparation for the immortal existence, 
adorn the spirit with all virtues acceptable 
in the sight of God. Because our brethren 
in Christ, and all the world by faith in 
Christ may inherit the life everlasting, let 
us withhold not the richest gifts of our- 
selves and our possessions for the benefit 
of our fellow-beings! Lo! these, by the 
greatness of God's gifts to them, are the 
children of the Eternal Day! 
348 



AUG 31 1912 



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